Project Description Bulloch County is a rural Georgia community experiencing rapid economic development and growth due to the nearby newly constructed Hyundai electric vehicle plant. This growth has raised concerns within the community about how it will change. Responding to this growth and concerns, leaders from Bulloch County, the City of Statesboro, the Statesboro-Bulloch Chamber of Commerce, Bulloch County Schools, the Bulloch County Development Authority, Georgia Southern University, and Ogeechee Technical College have come together to form a community planning group. This presentation will describe the formation and functioning of this group as well as their first project, a community indicators dashboard. Relationship to the Conference Theme This project relates to the conference theme of Innovative Pathways to Thriving Communities by examining the collaborative effort of local organizations to break down silos, build networks, and leverage shared resources and knowledge to address the impact of rapid economic development in a mostly rural community. This effort represents a placed-based collaborative approach to bridge sectoral boundaries by bringing together key public, private, and educational resources to focus on changes occurring within the county that contains a progressive micropolitan city and a large unincorporated agrarian area. We will highlight the successes and challenges of the group as it addresses community concerns. The first challenge confronted by the group is the spread of misinformation about growth and development via social media. To address this challenge the group wants to provide reliable sources of information. To help in this effort the group is creating a web-based community indicators dashboard. The dashboard incorporates measures with a strong social justice focus highlighting disparities due to the high poverty rate and marginalized populations. This presentation will also describe the selection of the dashboard indicators, the design of the website and dashboard, and the engagement activities utilized in the construction of the dashboard.
