By Rhys Baker

Grow Clay County has received a grant called Clay Connects. Director Natalie Muruato says the grant has multiple purposes that will affect the next generation, “One to attract young families and professionals to Clay County to help fill our jobs. Second is connection and integration into the community. Part of this is young people coming to our community, young people, new teachers, and if they’re not integrated and connected to community members, they move, they leave, and we need people to fill our jobs. We need people to fill volunteer positions. We need families to support our businesses, all sorts of things like that.”

Muruato says that now that the group has some funding, the next step is to recruit young professionals to help develop the group and the next generation. She has named Grow Clay County Lead Event Coordinator Kathryn Doster-Tipsword and Clay Center newcomer Sofia Gallup as the group’s co-chairs, “We are looking for a couple more core pioneers to help us develop the program.  We still need another four or five people to help guide the work, set up the program, and figure out what they want to do and how they want to help other young professionals in the community. Ultimately, the goal is to engage those 40 and under and new people who come to our community to integrate, but I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be age-restricted. Again, that’ll be up to that group if they want it to be that way.”

Muruato, Tipsword, and Gallup recently attended Young Professionals grant-sponsored training. In addition to the Young Professionals Groups, Grow Clay County is developing an incentive package to move to Clay County for the younger generation, a mentoring class, adding young professional events, and creating family events. Muruato says that once the Young Professionals group starts, she wants to step back and let members decide how the group will develop