Rural economic development workshop helps leaders in 12 Deep East Texas counties

NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KTRE) - A group of Deep East Texas business leaders got together Friday with the goal of growing the local economy and attracting more business.

Texas Forest Country Partnership provided attendees with information to help them further develop their workforces. CEO of Texas Forest Country Partnership Nancy Windham focused on building relationships between employers and educators.

“Our main purpose is to have a workshop to where we bring all twelve counties of the Texas Forest Country Partnership together to talk about business retention and expansion, business attraction, but mainly economic development. What is that? What does it mean to the community? What does it mean to the businesses,” Windham said.

Eddie Hopkins, an executive director for Jasper Economic Development Corporation, said the workshop also focused on helping business develop as COVID-19 continues to present challenges.

“We have the jobs, we just need to find folks to fill them and so this has been a great time today to connect workforce development professionals and economic development professionals together to explain the need and what we can do to get those folks back into the workforce,” Hopkins said.

Bo Miller, an agent at Texas Farm Bureau in Nacogdoches, said these tools are helpful for employers trying to navigate this uncertain time.

“That’s totally changed the landscape of how we do business. People are not as willing to meet person to person anymore and it’s presented some other difficulties, so it’s important to change in this type of an environment and adapt to how people want to continue to do business,” Miller said.