After the high school graduation caps have been tossed in the air, young rural Kansans have an assortment of options ahead of them. Many make the decision to attend college or go headstrong into the workforce. After they have experienced life outside of their small hometown communities, it’s rare for them to return home.
But why?
“I hear all of the time that young people move away and don’t come back to the town,” said Elyssa Jackson, a California transplant who has taken to Iola. “Sometimes the young people who live here have ideas for the community but their ideas get squashed a little bit.”
Jackson wants to change this. In 2009, Marci Penner, executive director of Kansas Sampler Foundation, created the PowerUp movement. The purpose behind the movement is to bring together people ages 21 to 39 to create ways to bring “new life” to a rural community.
Jackson, who moved to Iola in October 2012, first heard about the movement at a conference a month after arriving to town.
“This movement is about celebrating what great things we have in our town and promoting those things to other young people,” she said. “We have so much potential here.”
Jackson has decided to bring the PowerUp movement to Iola. Jackson said she is rural by choice, a motto that is used as a platform for the PowerUp cause.
“I love living here,” Jackson said. “I want to share those things with those who live here.”
She is looking to recruit other young community members to share the love of a small community. Rural by choice believers are people who choose to live in a small town over a city. They enjoy community involvement, knowing who their neighbors are and celebrating their community.
Those who become involved in the PowerUp movement would meet and brainstorm ideas for the community. They would create enticing ways to bring a younger generation back to the area.
“We’re all a part of this community,” she said. “I don’t want to change everything, but make it even more awesome.”
ONE GROUP of young people Jackson would like to reach out to are Allen Community College students.
“One area that I feel isn’t tapped is the college,” she said. “We don’t do anything for them to get them to stay. How do we get them involved here once their two years are done?”
In other areas of the state the PowerUp movement has worked to use its community resources. Jackson attended a conference in Toganoxie recently. There they met with PowerUps and PowerOns (those 40 and older who support helping the younger generation move forward) to discuss the future of an abandoned elementary school.
