By: Summer Kelley, Staff Reporter

The benefits of Project Synergy continue to reach throughout the state of Georgia to bring continuing notoriety to Dade County.

Last week four representatives of Dade County and the Dade County School System headed to Milledgeville, for the Governor’s Entrepreneurial Summit. 

Chamber of Commerce Director Debbie Tinker was joined by Better Hometown Manager and County Commissioner Peter Cervelli and Dade Middle School teachers Thomas Randolph and Matt Jelley. The group had been invited to the summit as presenters on best practices and as part of a panel discussion on community tools and best practices.

Other presenters at the conference included Craig Lesser, Commissioner for the Georgia Department of Economic Development; Heidi Green the Deputy Commissioner for the Georgia Department of Economic Development; John Tulley, the President of Michelin Development, North America and Kennedy Smith of The CLUE Group.

Dade County was invited to be a part of the conference due to the county’s Entrepreneurial Friendly designation and Project Synergy. According to Tinker, Dade County was the only educational group at the conference. The title of their presentation was “Youth Entrepreneurship; A Rural Community Knows How to Do It; Project Synergy” and garnered a lot of interest from the other counties attending the conference.

“We had many people from several counties come to us and ask to be invited to our next Project Synergy,” Tinker said.

The presentation by Dade County was divided into sections with each member of the group contributing the information they were most familiar with. Tinker spoke on how Project Synergy got started, who the partners were, how the Chamber develops partnerships with and for the school and how the Chamber helps to promote Project Synergy. 

Cervelli presented information on Dade County, the economic situation here and what it means to Dade County to develop a workforce. Randolph and Jelley gave their presentation on Project Synergy itself and the educational aspects. 

“Those attending the summit were asked to score the different speakers,” Tinker said. “We were told that many of ours scored ‘more than exceeded’. Quite a few people were very impressed with what Dade County was doing to develop their next workforce.”

Tinker said overall it was a very good summit and she hopes that showing how businesses, the community and government work together with the educational system in Dade County will get the attention of companies that want to come into the area.

“A lot of the time with companies your potential work force is sometimes as important as your location,” Tinker said. “Education is a big thing. When you hear some of these people talk – education is important and they look at how you are a developing a workforce.”