Last week the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce held its annual meeting, giving members a chance to socialize, honor Village Grocery owner Troy Kingsbury with the organization’s annual Win Smith, Be Better Award and receive an update from executive director Eric Friedman on the chamber’s work.
Listening to Friedman explain priorities and plans, it is apparent that there’s been a shift in awareness at our local chamber. A valuable consciousness is developing that is welcome and refreshing. That’s demonstrated by several current and a future project being undertaken here.
In addition to the focus on supporting local businesses, and making our community as strong and resilient as possible, our chamber director, and board are venturing into the arena of being “woke.”
Now for many people being woke is a bad thing, but the way it’s translating here is a mission of social justice, inclusion, connection and a clean environment in a place where everybody is safe from sexual predation, assault, and harassment.
It means a place where we work together to make our community as accessible as possible because it's the right thing to do – and doing the right thing is ultimately good for business. These are good things that the chamber’s AccessMRV is working to improve and promote.
It means the chamber partnering with other community groups to develop the Mad River Recreation Hub with its emphasis on recreation trails that reflect shared community values around where outdoor recreation is appropriate and where it is not.
Stand Up for Safety is a chamber initiative offering support and resources and posters for public bathrooms throughout The Valley. That benefits all of us and all of our businesses and our employees and patrons feel safe and have access to resources they need.
StewardMRV is in its third year of fostering an ethos of stewardship surrounding access to our recreational assets. It grows every year as more and more community volunteers come forward to adopt specific recreation sites to keep them free of garbage, debris, and dog poop.
These are all good things. They foster inclusion, safety, accessibility, unpolluted recreational assets, and opportunities.
All hail “woke!”
