Local community development programs often struggle to find appropriate resources and creative ideas for their communities. Recognizing that building the leadership capacity of all Kentuckians requires shared resources and strategies, the Kentucky Community Leadership Programs Summit has created a collaborative leadership network. In 2025 the network shared online resources for program development, and hosted training sessions across the state to test them. By combining programming design tools with facilitative skill development, this program provided capacity building for more effective locally driven community engagement.
Relation to the Conference Theme: This session shares a practical approach of community leadership development that focuses on people-driven empowerment. Working in conjunction with Kentucky Cooperative Extension and the Kentucky State Chamber of Commerce, our project has convened a statewide network of community leadership programs. This year, the team of representatives from the State Chamber Executives office and Cooperative Extension representatives from the states 1864 and 1890 land grant universities, set out to host a series of workshops held in locations across the state. The workshops presented new planning tools for community leadership program coordinators and facilitation training for volunteer leadership program day leaders. By combining resource delivery with volunteer facilitation training, the event delivered important capacity building to communities across the state.
