On November 7th, 2016, the Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments hosted the Annual Summit and Awards Banquet for our Board members and regional partners.
As a federally designated Economic Development District, Santee-Lynches must review the strengths and weaknesses of our region, identify opportunities to advance economic vitality and promote new strategies for economic development through public and private partnerships. At the Summit, we worked with the participants on three exercises designed to help with that review process. The first was a group exercise to identify the identity of the region 20 years ago, today, and 20 years from now. Next, the participants broke into groups of about 8 to conduct an economic development focused SWOT exercise in which they were asked to articulate the region's positive and negative features to a prospective industry. Finally, each participant was asked to take some time to individually write down as many economic development related activities to pursue as they could think of on sticky notes. Once that was done, the groups then used an Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize the activities in four categories based on urgency and importance. The exercise resulted in a set of "pursue now" items, "plan for later" items, "partner" items, and "park it" items.
During the banquet portion of the event, Dr. Michael Mikota, Executive Director, presented several awards. Rep. Grady Brown was recognized for his dedicated service and leadership on the COG Board as he retires from the South Carolina House of Representatives, Sharon Durden was presented an award for 20 years of service as an employee of the COG, and COG staff along with the Santee-Lynches Workforce Development Board, Central Carolina Technical College, Sumter Economic Development, Kershaw County, South Carolina Department of Commerce and Santee-Lynches Regional Education Center were recognized for receiving three National Innovation Awards from the National Association of Development Organizations.
