Hillsboro graduates three from leadership class
Hillsboro residents Megan Kilgore, Gina Edwards, and Jim Elliott were three of eight graduates in the Leadership Marion County Class of 2003 who received their certificates of completion of the class Monday night.
The graduation dinner was at the Burns Community Center.
Others in the class were Michael Soyez of Marion, Sarah Cope of Florence, Pastor Roger O'Neal of Peabody, Carolyn Koehn of Burns, and Tina Novak of Tampa.
Tom Alstrom, Leadership Marion County chairman and master of ceremonies Monday night, said Novak had just a class or two to complete in the program, and will do so next year. The board of trustees wanted Novak to be at Monday's event, since she was a part of the 2003 class.
Three class members, Cope, Elliott, and Koehn, were selected to serve on the 2004 board.
O'Neal spoke the pre-dinner invocation. Board member Joanna Brazil introduced the guest speaker, Jeff Usher, program officer from the Kansas Health Foundation.
This was the 15th Marion County class, making a total of 120 countians who have received the training.
Marion County commissioners annually allocate funds for the program, through the Marion County Economic Development Council.
Brazil said she and two other graduates of the Marion County program have received Leadership Capacities training through the Kansas Community Leadership Initiative of KHF.
Vision, focus, being future-minded and action-oriented are just a few of the qualities emphasized in the program, she said.
Usher said KHF works with all the major leadership programs in Kansas — 26 of them.
Usher facilitates programs throughout Kansas for KHF. He said Brazil had asked him to be inspirational and motivational with his talk. He said he did not know if he would fill that bill, but "We at Kansas Health Foundation do try to inspire and motivate people," he said.
The organization's goal is to improve the health of all Kansans, he said. Children's health, public health, including environmental concerns, and leadership are KHF's top concerns.
The organization makes grants totaling $17 million to $20 million yearly in Kansas, to leadership programs and other groups and projects.
"We want to make Kansas the best place to raise a child," Usher said, adding that perhaps Marion County would come to be the best place of all for that.
Lack of sustained, consistent leadership is often a problem, he said. Servant leadership is a basic tenet of leadership programs. It's for people who want to serve others first, before "doing any leading."
Trust and respect are necessary for people to work together. Concern for the community as a whole is needed, too, in order to be a servant leader, Usher said.
"It's about 'we,' not 'me,'" he said. Awareness and networking are needed, but beyond them, also the skills to build a "leader-full community," he said.
Those include collaboration, consensus-building, vision, facilitation, learning styles, and feedback, to name only a few.
"It's about relationship and trust, building, creating, leaders. We want to engage everyone in a partnership."
