Marshall County Leadership Challenge

Dianne Prestridge is a Realtor for Century 21. She is a retired teacher from Arab High School and a former member of the Arab City Council.

You would think that someone who has lived in Marshall County for 50-plus years would know just about everything there is to know about the area.

Wrong!

I have spent the past nine months being educated as part of the Marshall County Leadership Challenge Class of 2010. What an experience this has been - one that I highly recommend to anyone interested.

The leadership program provides an opportunity to interact with leaders and future leaders of Marshall County.

The 25 members of our group originate from each of the four cities and the county at large. We are from different careers, backgrounds and vary greatly in age. But throughout the year, we have found many common threads while we enjoy the uniqueness each individual brings to the program.

As we've worked together on class projects and participated in monthly programs, we are not individuals from Arab, Albertville, Boaz, Guntersville or Marshall County - we are a whole working toward the same goals, networking and sharing ideas.

Too often our cities and county come together only in times of crisis and are always good to step up when needed, but we must realize that by working together we can accomplish much more than we can as individuals or small communities.

When applying for this program, we were asked not only what we perceived as positive aspects of Marshall County, but also what we felt were some pressing problems facing the county. I listed the lack of cooperative effort in achieving large goals.

For many years, the four cities and county have often been in competition with each other (in more ways than football), and friendly competition is to be expected. However, more areawide effort is often necessary to achieve larger, more costly goals that would be beneficial to all of us.

Programs such as MCLC enhance this idea and provide the experience of working together and thinking "outside the box" and outside city boundaries. The cooperation, friendship and bonding within our group has been a positive experience and given us all an appreciation for each other and our county as a whole.

We are blessed with a great quality of life in this area, outstanding schools and medical facilities, natural beauty with our lakes and mountains and a majority of good, honest hard-working people who are friendly and welcoming and want to keep our area attractive, productive and growing.

There is such a great difference in knowing about something and in experiencing it first-hand, and this program provides experiences. The MCLC program meets once a month for nine months. After the orientation program, other monthly programs focus on these areas: tourism, law enforcement, health and social services, education, media, state government, economic development and local government.

In June, participants who have met all the requirements will graduate as members of the MCLC Class of 2010. Since the program was founded in 1992 to prepare and build leadership resources within the county, more than 400 have graduated and are proud MCLC alumni.

As a group, we have met with outstanding county leaders from all professions.

We learned about law enforcement by touring the county jail, training facilities and viewing a drug enforcement presentation. The tourism day provided a behind-the-scenes look at the Whole Backstage, Arab's Historic Park, the Guntersville Museum, Jules Berta Winery and a tour of Cathedral Caverns.

The health and social services program reinforced how fortunate we are to have such outstanding medical facilities through both Marshall Medical Centers and their outpatient facilities. Touring these facilities made us realize that top-notch healthcare services are available to all residents as well as social services including Hospice of Marshall County and Shepherd's Cove, one of only three such facilities in the state. We came away with a new appreciation for these services.

As a retired teacher, I especially enjoyed the education program. We were fortunate to tour most of the city and county schools and experience innovations in education as our group did a hands-on demonstration of how food is digested through an AMSTI project kit and saw how technology enhances learning in many areas.

Media day afforded the opportunity to listen to experts from TV, radio and the press as well as tour some of their facilities. In April, we traveled to Montgomery for an exciting tour of the state capitol, legislative chambers and Alabama Supreme Court building.

This month's program will be economic development with a tour of several industrial sites in the county. The programs are diverse, well planned and informative.

Each class is required to have a class project. Our project was assisting with the 5K Run for Hospice of Marshall County and providing a banner for that organization. Another requirement is that each member must participate in four community events during the year involving local government, community projects, education and chamber of commerce functions.

MCLC is a hands-on, get involved and participate program. It is intense and high energy, often tiring on those monthly trips that last from early morning to late evening, but well worth the effort.

The experiences shared with the 24 classmates I now consider life-long friends will never be forgotten and have given me a new appreciation of our county and great hope for the future. I have been introduced to things I did not know about and have seen a new side of business, tourism, education, law enforcement, health care and the people of Marshall County who make this such a great place to live.

The experiences I've had in this program encourage me to stay involved in making Marshall County a better place to live, work and raise a family.

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