Homegrown Leadership: Selma-Dallas County Leadership Program Cultivates Leadership Skills

By: Katie Jackson

Whether you believe leaders are born or made, there's no doubt that every community has a rich-and often untapped-supply of citizens who possess leadership skills.

In Dallas County, as in several other rural Alabama counties, homegrown leadership talent is being nurtured and encouraged, resulting in huge benefits for the local community.

It all began for Dallas County some 13 years ago when Alabama Cooperative Extension System employees began looking for ways to facilitate economic and community development efforts in Alabama's Black Belt region. Among those Extension visionaries were Warren McCord, a now-retired Extension community development specialist, and Harriet Bates, an also-now-retired Dallas County Extension coordinator.

Through a Kellogg Foundation grant, the Extension staff members joined forces with Dallas County officials to establish Leadership Selma-Dallas County, a year-long leadership development program. Similar programs also were established in other Black Belt counties.

The very first Selma-Dallas County leadership program brought together adults from diverse racial, professional and economic backgrounds to hone their leadership skills and to collaborate on community development ideas.

That was in 1993, and the program is now one of the longest running rural leadership development programs in the state which, 10 years ago, expanded to include a youth leadership development program.

According to Carolyn Powell, director of Leadership Selma-Dallas County, the program is housed in the Dallas County Centre for Commerce, which includes the Selma-Dallas County Economic Development Authority, Tourism and Convention Bureau and Chamber of Commerce.

"The leadership program sprouted out of a need for leaders within the community," she says. "We knew that we could not ask others to do things for us that we were not willing to do ourselves, and so we began working with future and current leaders from a broad cross-section of the community."

"We always say, if 'THEY' would only do this or that things would improve. We bring all those 'theys' together in this class," she continues. "The class members may not always agree with each other, but they learn to work together and do something for the greater good."

Each class also adopts a local community project to complete during their year of class, such as cleaning up a park or school grounds or helping with some other community project or need.

One of the first speakers for the very first adult Leadership Selma-Dallas County class was Bill Sauser, an associate dean of Business and Engineering Outreach and professor of management in the AU College of Business who specializes in strategic planning issues. He was asked by Bates to help with the initial class orientation in 1993 and the experience was so positive for Sauser that, even though his duties have changed here at Auburn over those years, he returns every year to work with each new class.

The idea behind this program is to offer community development expertise from the inside. In other words, find natural leaders within a community and empower them to make decisions and take action, says Sauser.

"Most of the class members already have some leadership skills," says Sauser, "but, through the program, they learn more skills and are exposed to the entire county system-government, education, medical system, prison system, human resources-and they even visit the state Legislature."

By the end of the year, says Sauser, they have made vital connections with their classmates AND have learned enough about their county that each class member can make educated decisions on how to improve their community.

Sauser is not the only AU expert who has been on the Selma-Dallas County leadership program agendas. AU staff and faculty often lend their expertise to the class sessions.

Jennifer Kerpelman, a professor and Extension specialist of human development and family studies in the AU College of Human Sciences, has, this year, helped with both the adult and youth programs in Dallas County and a youth leadership program in Autauga County.

"Callie Nelson, the Dallas County Extension coordinator who was a member of last year's Leadership class, asked me to help this year's class learn about personal development and team building during their orientation retreat," says Kerpelman.

Kerpelman agreed and was blown away by the quality of the program and its participants. "This program brings together diverse citizens who want to make a difference. I was so impressed with their energy and thoughtfulness, and I could see that these people have the right ingredients to really make a difference," she says.

"I left there feeling energized," she adds. "They are already 'getting it' and we are just enhancing the process."

After her interaction with the adult Selma-Dallas County group, Kerpelman willing agreed to go back the following month to help kick off the tenth annual Selma-Dallas County youth leadership program.

The youth program involves junior-level students from seven very different high schools located in the county, including schools that are very large and very small, predominantly black and predominantly white, "city," "rural" and even private schools, including a Christian academy.

Sauser notes that the AU connection is a prime example of outreach in action. "When you find an indigenous population that wants to work on something and you find university expertise available to them through Cooperative Extension or the colleges, that is a perfect example of outreach at work. We are bringing the knowledge base of the university and putting it to work in the hands of the people to make a difference."

Have these leadership classes worked in Dallas County? While no quantitative evaluations have been done, anecdotal evidence says "Yes!" Powell, who also works in Congressman Artur Davis' office, can cite such things as changes in community attitudes toward race and completion of community projects as prime examples of its effectiveness.

For Gregory Ware, a high school senior who completed the youth program last year and is volunteering as a mentor for this year's youth class, the experience was eye-opening. Last year his class was given the exercise of feeding a family of four for a week with just $30 in cash.

"Poverty lives all around us here," he says of his community. "The project really gave us a feel for how hard it is to feed a family of four for $30, and a lot of times people have even less than that to spend."

Based on that experience Ware and his other classmates have started a coat and clothing drive for Dallas County to ensure that low-income families stay warm for the winter.

It is precisely this sort of community awareness and investment that the Leadership Selma-Dallas County program has and will continue to promote, and to help with that a new alumni group has been formed, led by 2005-2006 adult Leadership alumnus Eric Roussell. This group will help with specific projects and also help raise money so the youth and adult programs can continue well into the future.

In the meantime, the advances made by past, current and future Leadership Selma-Dallas County class members are proof-positive that, born or made, leaders are one of the greatest natural resources of any community, and well worth nurturing and protecting.

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