Take a moment to recognize community and collaboration
There are decades when seemingly nothing happens, and there are weeks when it feels like decades worth of change happen. 2020 has been filled with the latter – when our baseline changes every week, and we are forced to adjust to the next normal. With no real sense of what “normal” even looks like anymore.
Yet every day we are one day closer to normalcy – or better yet – defining what normal looks like in our current reality. After all, we can’t (yet) time travel to visit prior dates or leap ahead to future time. But we can continue to reimagine how we conduct business. We can develop more efficient, inspired ways to be productive. We can create new approaches to our economic recovery efforts.
Despite the very real challenges that exist and the obstacles ahead, it is vital to celebrate community success. Not even a pandemic should stop us from celebrating the successes that do exist in the challenge that is 2020. Consider…
More than ever, people appreciate the important role small business play in our economy and community in general. The success of our small businesses affects our economy, employ our friends & neighbors, and define our unique mountain town community character. Our local businesses are resilient.
The importance of our nonprofit community in meeting the needs of our citizens has also been highlighted in 2020. Our nonprofits should be celebrated for their community fundraising efforts and for initiating never-seen-before levels of collaboration to help our most vulnerable populations. Our nonprofits are vital.
Our local government and special districts play an important role in our ongoing recovery and deserve recognition for their leadership. From fire districts to towns, and from county government to the school district, these government partners are instrumental in rebuilding and supporting our community. Our governments are supportive.
The Partnership is playing our part in this as well. We do not exist to sell memberships, programs, or services. We exist to move Eagle County forward and help your business grow—whatever that may look like in the future. We exist to be a champion for Eagle County, to be a catalyst for business growth, and to be a convener of leaders to get things done.
We are honored to have been recognized as Chamber of the Year earlier this month. It is quite the honor to be recognized as “best of the best” with over 4,000 chamber of commerce organizations in the United States. On behalf of the board and staff at the VVP, I wanted to say thank you to all of our members and stakeholders for challenging us to move our community forward and for entrusting us with our support as we go about building new programs, services, and tools to help our members and our community survive and thrive into the future. We exist to serve our community and our members, and we take that responsibility seriously.
We will continue to lead collaboration, as collaboration is the fastest way to create an economy that works for all of us to help recover from this ongoing pandemic. Despite the very real uncertainty that exists, the fact is our community foundation is solid and I am confident that we will come out of this even stronger than we were before, but it’s going to take all of us.
Take a moment to celebrate the successes that exist around you; it is more important than ever to express thanks, reflect on the good, and prepare to address our challenges together.
Chris Romer is president & CEO of Vail Valley Partnership, the regional chamber of commerce. Learn more at VailValleyPartnership.com