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 Over the past few years we in the Rossville area have seen the Kansas PRIDE Community of Excellence award signs in city park, or read about the ongoing Healthy Ecosystem-Healthy Community water project we are involved with but don't have a clue what it is all about. Well your wait is over. We are privileged to be one of over sixty, mostly rural cities that are in the Kansas PRIDE Program.
The Kansas PRIDE Program is a citizen-based approach to improve the quality of life in Kansas communities. Founded on the belief that the best solution for community improvement must come from the community itself. Communities identify areas in which they want to improve, and PRIDE helps them get there.
Rossville was recently designated as a “Community of Excellence” by PRIDE. This is the program’s highest award and one in which the Rossville community should take great pride! At the annual awards program Rossville received a $500 award to assist the community in future improvement projects.
Kansas PRIDE encourages citizens to work together to identify community improvement projects. It offers a network of ideas along with the tools and resources needed to assist a community in developing plans and achieving its goals. The Kansas Department of Commerce, K-State Research and Extension along with Kansas Pride Inc., a non-profit organization, co-administer the program. The funding for the on-site evaluations and PRIDE Day celebrations and awards, etc.; is provided by privatesector companies and associations who understand that the unique strength of Kansas comes from her thriving rural communities. What this looks like in Rossville is the completion of a yearly Community Assessment Tool that examines the local social, economic and physical environment. This tool is designed to help a community to identify areas of need then assist them through the design, funding and implementation steps of a project to meet those needs.
With K-State Research and Extension being a co-administrator of the PRIDE program, we have all the resources of the various education departments at K-State to help us. This assistance is in the form of professors and their graduate students using our ideas and challenges as hands-on class projects that they take back to Manhattan and complete for us. Through out the process we are in touch with our Pride advisory team for assistance and advice when needed.
Although the PRIDE awards are not monetarily substantial, $500.00 and $1000.00, the free expertise along with the amazing network of contacts has proved to be priceless for our city.
So now when you see those PRIDE signs in the park, you can see that they actually represent connections to literally thousands of individuals and educational connections we have to help us accomplish our dreams no matter how big they may be! Strong partnerships with the city, community development, economic development, local organizations and institutions demonstrate the effectiveness of working cooperatively for a better Rossville!
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