Good Fabulous Morning from Beautiful, Awesome and Wonderful Monroe, Louisiana. I am stealing the “Good Fabulous Morning” from our great friend, great board member and champion of workforce Dr. Wendi Tostenson of Louisiana Delta Community College. I hope you believe like me that each day we wake up in Northeast Louisiana it is going to be a great day.
Things continue to be busy as we get the kids back in school and roll into the fall. Football kicks off this week and that makes many extremely happy. We are blessed with great sports in our area and passionate fans.
Last Tuesday our educational leaders from the city, parish and BESE Board shared tremendous messages that updated us and gave us a glimpse of the future for our schools. Thank you, Dr. Brent Vidrine, Dr. Don Coker and Ashley Ellis, for great messages. Education is THE most IMPORTANT aspect of workforce and our future economic development growth. Beyond last week’s lunch, The Chamber’s education committee, led by Dr. Tostenson and Maggie Generoso, continues to focus help to our local K-12 partners. The Banner project ran into some production delays and is back on schedule. Thank you, ULM, Louisiana Delta, Bill Willson and CenturyNext Bank, Monroe City, and Monroe City Schools for partnering on this project. You will be receiving more information and a request for help as we re-launch our Adopt a School program for Monroe City Schools. Another thanks to Bill Willson for bringing in STEMusic on September 17 and 18 to our Monroe City School 3rd and 4th graders. This will be a great program that will get your folks excited about STEM learning. A group of us are headed to Walker High School on September 27th for a tour of the cool things they are doing with CTE.
Our Technology Committee is in full swing as they continue plans for a HUGE Cyber Security Workshop on October 27th at Bayou Pointe on the beautiful ULM campus. There is no more important issue facing our businesses today. We are also finishing up plans for a social media workshop with many local partners in late September as well.
Our small business committee partnered with our good friend DJ Fortenberry from the city to host a mid-town merchants meeting last Thursday. This is a follow up to meetings with Pecanland Mall and our area’s Commercial Realtors. Our next meeting will be with South Monroe merchants.
You should have received a health survey please if you can fill that out. Our Non-Profit committee is gathering surveys from our Non-Profit community to develop ways the business community can help them.
Last Thursday our board met and enjoyed ice cream sundae’s as we worked through numerous projects and discussed things going on. Thanks to all who gave us testimonials. We have begun selling and putting together this year’s “Inside Chamber” magazine. Be on the watch for the special section inside. Our diversity committee will be sending out information on our next community. Our Total Resource efforts have started, and we have good new efforts for 2023.
Be watching each Thursday as we share Discover Monroe-West Monroe’s weekend calendar. If you haven’t signed up for it, I urge you to do so – there is so much going on in our region.
Our Workforce Coordinator, Adam Alexander, is busy putting together a huge Career Expo on September 21st. More information to follow.
Make sure you like us on Facebook – remember we own our story – you are our best story tellers – celebrate you and celebrate MONORE/Northeast Louisiana.