Description

Spring 2024 Session Registration Closed
Live Office Hours – Wednesdays, 12-1 pm Eastern, March 27 – June 26

Need a Scholarship? Apply HERE

Created and intended for everyday people just like you, our courses will equip you with:

• A basic understanding of your community’s economy and how it works
• Knowledge for better decision-making/action-taking, which can deliver innovative, sustainable, and systemic change in your community
• A set of user-friendly tools for analyzing and transforming data into useful information to be used in telling your community’s economic story
• A common framework, language, and vocabulary for communication, cooperation, negotiation, and deliberation

Twelve week course – Video lessons On-Demand. Weekly discussions Live Via Zoom. – Scholarships available.

Participants for this full 12-week course receive a Community Economists Certificate upon completion.

Unit 1: Introduction to Community Economics   

You’ll learn key definitions and terminologies used in community economics and some unique intersections of community economics with agriculture, cooperative extension, economic and environmental justice. You’ll learn about theory of change and the wealth creation/wealth building approach to community economics and gain mastery of certain tools like community impact assessment, cross-sectional and time-series analysis of data.

Unit 2: Keeping Wealth, Income and Jobs Local  

You’ll learn how to keep wealth, income and jobs within your local economy by understanding how local wealth and local demand are created. You’ll be able to identify local strengths as well as being able to identify local/regional market opportunities. You’ll learn how cooperatives can create both individual and community wealth that sticks. Using local firms and food systems as the example, you will learn about supply chains, value chains, and location quotients.

Unit 3: Local Engines of Growth and Development   

You’ll learn how to identify exporting and importing industries, determine the competitiveness of local firms and their capacity to meet local and nonlocal demand. You’ll learn how anchor institutions like HBCUs and cooperatives can be local engines of economic mobility, growth and development. You’ll learn about industry and occupation clusters and whether or not your community is ready for the knowledge economy and innovation. You’ll learn how to use cluster analysis and interpret your community’s innovation index.

Unit 4: Telling Your Community’s Economic Story

You’ll learn how to tell your community’s economic story by understanding economic impact, identifying your at-risk populations and neighborhoods, and the level of private investment and public spending (like the Farm Bill and federal commissions and authorities). You’ll be exposed to economic impact analysis, GIS spatial analysis, and qualitative analysis.

Unit 5: Presentation and Graduation

You’ll present your Community Economists Plan (CEP) for your community and receive your certification as a Community Economist and a graduate of the Institute.