New Study By Community Council Starts Sept. 17

WAITSBURG - In a rural community, it's easy to feel like helping and making changes for the better are impossible as a single person.

The Community Council understands that feeling, which is why they put together a non- profit organization to help people connect to their community.

The five-year old organization prides itself on bringing individu- als together to help strengthen communities by focusing on different topics to discuss for lengths of time in order to come up with a way to improve on each issue and you can help them out this month. Executive Director Julie Reese said the next study the council will be discussing is communication between citizens and government. The commit- tee's study will officially begin on Wednesday, Sept. 26 and the group is open to anyone who is interested in learning more about communication between citizens and government, Reese said.

All interested residents are invited to attend the first informal gathering from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 13, at the Waits- burg Elementary School and at the same time on Monday, Sept. 17, in the Prescott School multi- purpose room. The gatherings are free and open to the public. At the gatherings, board and staff members from the Community Council will answer questions and preview the upcoming com- munication study, according to a press release from the Community Council.

Study Coordinator Douglas Carlsen said the committee will meet on Wednesdays from 12 to 1:30 p.m. at the YWCA in Walla Walla. The committee will meet for 26 weeks with a three-week break in November and a two- week break in December.

Reese said the resource meetings will involve the committee lis- tening to presentations from people who have a lot of knowledge or experience on the topic. After the resource meetings, the committee will spend the rest of the meetings discussing what they have learned and what steps need to be taken to improve on the issue.

"It's a citizen-drive process," Reese said. "We try to look at the topic from all perspectives."

After the six-month panel is completed, the Community Council will take the gathered data from the committee and implement a plan to satisfy whatever conclusions were drawn.

For more information about the Community Council, visit wwcommunitycouncil.org.