Rural areas learning how to bring young people back home; start by listening to them, University of Georgia finds

Grady County, Georgia (Photo by UGA College of Agricultural Sciences Extension, creative commons/flickr.com)

A rural high school graduate goes off to college, gets a degree and is never seen or heard of in those parts again. Rural areas have long lost their young adult populations, and they need them. "In rural areas of Georgia, like Grady County, losing young adults to schools and jobs in other cities and states can break the succession of community leaders, which is vital to future success," writes Margaret Blanchard of the University of Georgia Extension Service.

As part of the university's PROPEL (Planning Rural Opportunities for Prosperity and Economic Leadership) program, Grady County, on the Florida border, was able to dig into why students may not come back home. A survey of students at Cairo High School asked what young people "would like to see in their hometown, how much they knew about job opportunities in the area, and if they planned on staying close to home after graduation," Blanchard writes.

Whitney Brannen, a work-based learning coordinator for the university, was able to use knowledge from the survey in her work. "I was really surprised at the number of students who didn’t know what they wanted to do after school and if they wanted to leave or stay,” she told Blanchard. “It’s an opportunity for the community to take a look at that and say, ‘Hey, Jane Doe doesn’t know what she wants to do, but she has an interest in this, so why don’t we bring her into our job and let her see what we have here?’”

Blanchard writes, "Job shadowing is just one idea to come out of the information-gathering process for the southwestern Georgia county. The community is also planning to highlight existing career pathways and invite students to industry roundtables where local businesses gather and network."

Brannen told Blanchard, “Most people think the only job opportunities we have here are working for a restaurant — specifically a chicken restaurant — and that’s not the case.” She pointed out other nearby industries such as the 240-acre plant nursery, a ball-bearing factory and a plant that makes materials for all-terrain vehicles. Youth migration "isn’t a new problem for rural communities participating in PROPEL," Blanchard writes. "But survey results from high school students in Grady County indicate the problem may be due to a lack of awareness rather than discontent with the rural lifestyle."

Saralyn Stafford, rural development manager for the Vinson Institute of Govrrnment at UGA, told Blanchard, “If you get good community participation, it allows those who are responsible for developing and implementing the plan to know that they will have some support for the efforts underway.”