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Empower South Carolina: An Open Movement to Create Tap Into The Creative Potential of Everyone - Columbia 9/29

Submitted by: John Warner on Sep 26, 2009 at 3:47 pm Tagged with: Academia, Economic Development, K-12 education Source: Empower South Carolina

Columbia - September 29th - 5:00 to 6:30 pm - Midlands Enterprise Campus

We all know our problems. South Carolina's unemployment rate has reached 12.1 percent, third highest in the nation. Nothing more closely correlates to personal income than the level of an individual’s education; we trail economically primarily because we trail in education. While South Carolina has laid key economic foundations in recent years, we are still playing catch-up from near the bottom in important measures of a modern economy. We all feel the anxiety that if we stay on the course we are on, the gap between us and the best in the world will continue to grow, and the income and quality of life for each of us will suffer.

This is not acceptable to any of us, and we know it doesn’t have to be this way. We only scratch the surface of tapping into South Carolina’s greatest source of opportunity, the enormous human potential all around each of us. Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, observes:

People who are part of the creative class—science, technology, arts, culture, entertainment and professions — account for 35 to 40 per cent of the work force and produce more than half of all wages and salaries. But here's the rub… every human being is creative.

The key to creating real, enduring economic prosperity is to extend the boundaries of the creative economy to everyone. Sooner or later, someone somewhere in the world will make this happen.

We will make it happen here. Empower South Carolina will create a broad consensus around a new economic and education strategy based on three principles:

• Keep our existing jobs and customers healthy and thriving by better connecting industry with education and small and medium sized companies;

• Nurture entrepreneurs in home grown companies who have the highest economic growth and create the wealth that stays local;
• Empower K-12 teachers by holding them accountable for what is essential, and then freeing them from the bureaucracy they suffer from so they can deliver quality, innovative education.

We will bring this strategy to life, by collecting and retelling personal success stories matching these principles that inspire us and make us proud to be South Carolinians.

How do you get involved? Join us by attending an Empower South Carolina meeting to write yourself into the new economic and education strategy for South Carolina. Give us your personal success story. Share with us resources and relationships you know about that can help others improve the income and quality of life for themselves, for our communities, and for our state. Find resources and relationships around you that can help you succeed.

A new economic and education strategy for South Carolina will be developed from the information we receive. We’ll share that with the Empower South Carolina community to get suggestions for improvement and to identify other resources and relationships to be included. We’ll continue in an iterative fashion until we have a comprehensive economic and education strategy that has broad support and becomes an increasingly more valuable resource for each of us. We’ll openly share it with business, education and political leaders throughout the state so they use our best ideas.

Empower South Carolina is a movement of the willing. We look forward to you getting involved. If you want more information, contact John Warner at JohnWarner@SwampFox.ws.