Norwich locals behind initiatives bringing Upper Valley citizens together online.

Norwich residents, Irv Thomae, Corey Klinck, Stan Williams, Katie Smith, Gavin Klinck of EC Fiber

Once the meeting house was the place where people would, well, meet, interact, and exchange news and information while discussing community affairs. Twenty odd years ago, along came the internet, enabling you to connect with a new, ethereal community. Remember dial-up? Your computer and landline joining forces, shrieking awkwardly in an attempt to establish a tenuous link that allowed you to exchange some brief messages with others far away? It was revolutionary and otherworldly, but slow and unreliable. And since the connection couldn’t be taken for granted, it was more novelty than productivity. It was also a blow to our sense of belonging to our traditional local community.

Since then, the internet has matured and grown exponentially. Today, (almost) everybody has access to an infinite amount of information and people online; telecommuting is routine, and teachers assign homework to complete online and “hand in” electronically. Everything from banking to shopping is done on the web, and many if not most of our daily social interactions are virtual, rather than real.

The Nuts and Bolts of Getting Us Connected

But all that digital excess is only available if your connection to the internet has kept pace. For many Vermonters, however, connectivity has remained sketchy and slow, leaving them stranded on the far side of “the digital divide” that separates those with access to new technologies from those without. To be clear, that’s not only a developed-versus-developing world issue: the digital divide has been called one of America’s leading economic and civil rights issues, and it affects rural areas, like Vermont, particularly badly.

This was why Governor Shumlin earlier this year reiterated that Vermont’s economy cannot function without sufficient internet access. “It’s no different than the telephone lines and electric lines, the challenge that Governor Aiken faced, back when that was being distributed through poles and wires,” he said of broadband. “I don’t think there’s a more important goal for a small, rural state.”

The state has struggled to achieve that goal, however, and in 2007, enterprising Vermonters took on the challenge to bring broadband to the underserved in East-Central Vermont. By 2010, after a bumpy ride through the great recession, EC Fiber had set up shop in South Royalton, and the company has since extended fiber optic cable – and with it high speed internet – to towns, libraries, companies and private subscribers in off-the-grid places, including parts of Norwich.

Getting community buy-in and gaining the necessary access to utility poles has required EC Fiber’s team to jump through countless hoops, their accomplishment is perhaps more one of financial prowess and negotiating skill than of engineering. With its community ownership and leadership, a team of friendly, local staffers and funding largely from local investors, EC Fiber certainly has more than a touch of modern day co-operative about it. With over 1,000 customers, their feisty business model is working well – so well, in fact, that EC Fiber is being noticed and their approach copied by other rural communities eager to deliver broadband, tired of waiting in vain for the state or commercial providers like Comcast to do so.

In a Norman Rockwell Painting, You’d Ask Your Neighbor

Once the high speed bytes flow freely, the first thing many users do is join the billion or so other users of Facebook, the social media juggernaut that – for better or worse – remains a primary conduit for information and interaction online. Perhaps you get back in touch with a long lost high school classmates or your old pen pal in Peru, but even if a few hundred of them are “friends,” Facebook’s vast network is no real community. As Chance Barnett of Forbes Magazine put it a few years ago, “Just because we connect with a person or company online, it doesn’t mean we have an actual relationship. Real connections are forged under many circumstances, but relationships built in local communities are more important than ever.”

Chris Healy and the Upper Valley

To bring it back down to scale, one option would be to establish a local community in the virtual world. That’s what Chris Healy of Norwich did five years ago, using Facebook’s built-in groups – “The place for small group communication and for people to share their common interests and express their opinion” according to Facebook itself. Chris had already seen the usefulness of such groups as a hockey coach, and he felt an online group could broaden the scope for instant, informal communication between people from different towns in the Upper Valley, on a platform with which they were already familiar.

Chris invited his friends, then let word of mouth (and clicks on mice) do the rest, and today the Upper Valley VT/NH Facebook group has almost six thousand members. It’s mission is for users is to: “Share your experiences, give advice, make referrals with your neighbors. Be nice to each other. Revel in our differences as well as our commonalities. Most of all, share your favorite Upper Valley finds.”

Members post almost anything, really. Live music announcements, requests for recommendations, announcements of yard sales. One member came looking for a “turtle-sitter,” another recently asked:  “Does anyone know who runs the ice cream truck that drives around Lebanon and West Lebanon in the summer time?” Less than five hours later, she had her answer.

“This group is not about selling things,” admonishes Chris in his welcome message on the group’s page. But as the moderator of the group he tries to be hands off, and he rarely has reason to intervene. “It’s somewhat self-policing,” he says. “People have really gotten the spirit of it and taken ownership.” Which may explain where Chris finds the courage to dream about expanding the group to involve more political discussions, hoping that the format would allow people to discuss local matters in a positive and meaningful way, while keeping things respectful.

Civic Participation in the Online Era

Whereas Chris Healy opted to use an existing social media network, Norwich resident, Watt Alexander, and his team at Subtext Media in White River Junction have instead built their own platform – a website called dailyUV.com – to support genuinely local, community-based conversation and connections while avoiding the privacy compromises and problems associated with sites like Facebook.

(VT/NH) Facebook page

DailyUV.com began by repurposing the content from the venerable Upper Valley email listservs, but it is evolving into a comprehensive suite of events calendars, marketplaces and interactive hubs of community information.

Rob Gurwitt  (also a Norwich resident) from Subtext Media notes that, even in a small town like Norwich, life has become more complex. “We’re busier, and with few exceptions – like the recent bond debacle – people just don’t have time to show up at a community meeting at 7pm. We saw that at Town Eating Day in Norwich, where we could never get more than a couple of hundred people to turn out. All the same, people do want to be and feel connected and informed, so local government and organizations in cities and small towns all over the country are struggling to figure out how to let people know what’s going on. That’s harder than ever with the barrage of information cluttering every media channel.”

Subtext Media’s approach is to use the internet to bring it all together, lowering the barriers to access information, and presenting curated local content in a more convenient and approachable way.

In Chris Healy’s ideal world, the connections forged online should lead to offline “real world” interactions as well – face-to-face meetings and collaboration on community projects. Rob Gurwitt isn’t convinced that improved access to local information will get more people actively involved in community life. “That remains up to each individual,” he says, but he does hope that the site will help stimulate discussion.

The reason Shumlin and others want all Vermonters connected to broadband is obviously not primarily so they may swap canning recipes with their neighbors. Rather, says Julia Pulidindi of the National League of Cities, “Ultimately, the goal of broadband access is to allow people to take advantage of its potential to improve the user’s experience, whether it’s for business development, improved healthcare, education or recreation.”

The goal is proving elusive, however, and the goalposts keep shifting. The leap from dial-up to even limited broadband like DSL was significant a few years ago, but the FCC recently increased the minimum speed that may properly be considered “broadband,” and as VPR reported in February, by that new standard, thirty percent of Vermonters still lack broadband.

Back row: T Davis, Rob Gurwitt, John Stephens, Mark Travis, Watt Alexander;
Front: Rich Cohen, Donna Mackall, Samantha Candon, John Olszewski.

EC Fiber’s Norwich-led team of innovators has taken a grassroots approach to help community members across the digital divide. Bit by bit, they’re connecting them to the online world around which our lives increasingly revolve. Once there, they can use both the dailyUV.com and the Upper Valley Facebook group to discuss matters great and small and share the experiences and insights that make the Upper Valley special. Our little community may be part of a brave new virtual world, but it can still be local.

Carole Dempsey, Lianne Moccia, Marilyn Dunten, Larry Gatto, Maureen Gatto, and Ted Frazer

There are worse things than dying, says Ira Byock, MD, former director of Palliative Care at DHMC. One of these is dying badly. To Byock, this means dying alone, perhaps in a hospital room, with the TV on. Rather, he says in the film Holding Our Own: Embracing the End of Life, we should be “waked out of life” in the company of loving family and friends. Illness and dying are often isolating, cutting a person off from both a sense of who they are and who they were, and from community.”

The Evergreen Singers, a local hospice choir inspired by the Hallowell Chorus in Brattleboro, Vermont (which was featured in the film Holding Our Own), is a group that truly wake the dying out of life, surrounded by song, and stir – remarkably – joy in singers and sung-for alike. “There is something magical about the voice and giving yourself and being vulnerable,” says Anna Alden, director. “Music helps people get to that emotion they may not have been able to get to.”

Margaret Jernstedt, Larry Gatto, Kathleen Shepherd, Mary Layton, Sue Bridge, Carole Dempsey, Sheila Moran, Martha McDaniel, and Linda Armstrong. (Barely visible in the back row is Marilyn Dunten and Sally Shipton.)

The Evergreen Singers was formed in 2007, recalls Penny McConnell, when she and Calli Guion wanted to sing for hospice patients. Early inspiration included the Hallowell Chorus, Kathy Leo, Mary Cay Brass, and Joan Shimer. The group moved around a bit, searching for a home, and now practice at St. Barnabas. In the early years, Calli says, when they were called the Upper Valley Community Choir, “We learned repertoire and practiced bedside singing around volunteers who would lie on the floor.” The group has coalesced now – though they are always looking for new members – and has strong affiliations with local hospices.

Currently there are 25 singers in the choir (only four men), with the ages of the singers ranging from 54 on up into the 70s. Many of the singers participate in other choirs, such as Revels, shape-note singing, or the Thetford Chamber Singers, to name just a few. Anna Alden, who became the director in September of 2014, says that her role is to give them feedback as musicians and to help with their singing. “It can be challenging to be a singer in this setting,” Anna explains. “The bedside group could be as small as four singers, so people really have to be able to sing independently.” The Evergreen Singers have a solid repertoire, and Anna is helping them add songs and genres. “Sometimes,” she says, “we’re asked if we can sing a country song.” As director, she is full of admiration for the wonderful and well-meaning singers who give the gift of music and their own vulnerability so readily.

Newly-hired director of Evergreen Singers, Anna Alden

In addition to the stability and support that a director now gives them, the training from hospice is a vital component of the group experience, says Norwich resident, Carole Dempsey, one of the Evergreen Singers. The training familiarizes them with the fundamental tenets of hospice, such as confidentiality, and honoring the beliefs and experiences of the dying, and also helps them feel more comfortable with entering the space of the dying. Additionally, Carole says, “These trainings serve as real bonding experiences for the singers. In regular rehearsals we are so focused on our music that there’s not time to get to know one another. The trainings really deepened our personal connections, and it is amazing how that influences our ability to provide a quality experience at bedside.”

In the film, Holding Our Own, the power of music for those on the threshold of life and death, and for those singing to them, is clear. Though the film focuses on the Brattleboro chorus which was the inspiration for the Evergreen Singers, this is a constant refrain from participants. “When someone is at the end of life,” Carole explains, “all that sort of non-essential life-noise falls away. No one is concerned about politics, or how they look, or their social status. Even though it can be an emotionally difficult time, there is always so much love in the room, and people are wanting to be present with each other at a very deep level. It’s as real as it gets.”

To learn more about participating with or receiving a visit from the Evergreen Singers, call Margaret Jernstedt at 603-643-3663, visit their website (www.evergreenvt.weebly.com) or email Anna Alden at aalden@rivendellschool.org. Next auditions will be held on March 29th.

Passing in or out of Norwich this fall one could see that the rolling meadow and apple orchard and the edges of the woods east of Main Street between the school property and I-91 were being pruned, raked, mowed, cut down so that when the job was completed, the entire area had been cleared and opened. A long metal fence, impacted with invasive growth, was dug out and removed. To some, it appeared as if the area had been permanently changed. We will, in fact, have to keep this area mowed until the invasive seeds and viable root systems that are still present have stopped resprouting. When this has happened, we will be able to replant native trees and shrubs.

This project, undertaken for the town by The Department of Public Works under the leadership of Andy Hodgdon with tractor, mower, backhoe and saw, had two main purposes: to reduce the devastating impact of invasive species and to bring the old orchard back to life. The endeavor greatly augmented the efforts of the Milton Frye Nature Area Committee. The committee had held a number of workdays to pull out old fencing and barbed wire and to pull up glossy and common buckthorn, oriental bittersweet vine, Japanese Barberry, and honeysuckle in several key areas of the Nature Center Area.  Local resident volunteers joined the committee. Students from Marion Cross School worked with their environmental science teacher, Lindsey Putnam, to help with uprooting and drying out the roots of large patches of buckthorn.

A great deal was accomplished by the town fall project; however, much more remains to be done. Many of the invasives reform from roots or seeds and must be again pulled out. Others, such as wild parsnip and chervil, and poison ivy must be cleared to prevent rashes and burning.  Invasive plants along the access and exit of I-91 are spreading rapidly into the Nature Area, and infiltrating properties along Route 5 and Main Street. The threat of invasive trees and plants reduces the available room for native trees and plants. The number of wildflowers is gradually diminishing as invasive ground plants take over their habitats.  A growing colony of Norway Maples threatens to crowd out pines, ash, and beech trees.

To keep this spread under control, new invasive growth must be uprooted, cut down, or, in some cases, treated with chemicals. The Milton Frye Nature Area Committee has consulted several experts on removing invasive plants, and is examining possible ways to fund their work.

The 36 acres of the Milton Frye Nature Area are a treasured resource for the town of Norwich. The Marion Cross School uses the area for environmental science projects of many kinds. Dog walkers, runners, and hikers frequent the three major paths that wind through the woods and the two stone ridges that divide the area. Spring bird walks are held each year. Mink, fox, deer, raccoon, porcupine, bobcat, bear, mice and vole tracks testify to the diversity of wild life that lives in or visits the area. A Barred Owl nests in one of the hollow trees and sometimes upsets a community of crows who roost in the tall pines. Hawks and vultures soar over the woods and field. Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, Indigo Buntings, Scarlet Tanagers, Goldfinches, and at least a dozen kinds of warblers visit the apple orchard and its environs.

We are fortunate to live in a community that recognizes the value of the Milton Frye Nature Area and acknowledges the importance of controlling invasive species there.  How can YOU help?  Join the committee on a weekend workday project.  Encourage your children to help as well.  The committee hopes to create an identification chart to post at the trailhead. Visit the websites listed below to inform yourself further about these invasives and be able to recognize them. Help Norwich to keep this wonderful resource alive and flourishing. It belongs to all of us.

Montshire Museum of Science Executive Director David Goudy has announced his plans to retire the end of March 2015, following 34 years as the Museum’s executive director.
During his tenure, Goudy led the Museum from a fledgling enterprise to a nationally recognized center for science learning. He has taken special interest in developing the Museum’s capacity for high-quality science education particularly in the context of the special challenges of serving a rural region. Montshire has become a national model, attracting research and program support from numerous private foundations and federal agencies.

Shortly after being appointed as executive director in 1981, Goudy negotiated the acquisition of 100 acres bordering the Connecticut River in Norwich, Vermont, and in 1989 the Museum moved from the former Golfside Bowling Lanes in Hanover, New Hampshire, to its current location.

He received the first annual New Hampshire Corporate Fund Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management, and represented Montshire at a White House reception with President Clinton recognizing Montshire as the first recipient of the National Award for Museum Service.

“David Goudy has made the Montshire Museum his life’s work. Over the three decades of his vigorous and enlightened service, his stewardship has made a lasting mark,” remarked Senator Patrick Leahy. “The Montshire Museum is one of Vermont’s great treasures. The Montshire offers exhibits that are both educational and interactive, for children and adults alike. Every time I have visited with Marcelle and, especially, our grandchildren, we have left thrilled and fulfilled.”

Upon announcing his retirement, Goudy said, “I have been immensely privileged to work with superb staff and trustees as well as an engaged, supportive community. No executive director could ask for a more creative environment to support development of a community cultural and educational asset like Montshire.”

“David has provided the Montshire with many years of remarkable service and his lasting legacy is immediately clear to anyone who visits the museum. While we will miss his exemplary leadership, the Board of Trustees is fully committed to maintaining the high standards that he has established for the Montshire’s educational programs, exhibits, facilities and visitor services,” said Norwich resident, Cinny Bensen, Chair of Montshire’s Board of Trustees.

Unifying Faith and Place

A neatly shoveled and remarkably wide path through February’s snowpack leads to the front door of the Reeves house at the top of Elm Street. The house itself, nestled into the shoulder of the hill, offers extensive vistas over the Connecticut Valley. The site is a fitting one for Sarah Reeves, whose training and interests combine inner reflection and relating to place in the world. A visitor instantly feels welcome; Sarah’s face, when not already smiling, looks as though it’s about to.

“Without really knowing it, I absorbed a sense of being rooted in the land and enjoying it” while growing up in the Nashoba Valley of Massachusetts, where her father was an apple grower. “Then you learn about land conservation, and now we’re in a crisis, threatening the viability of the earth – the fragile, beautiful earth – to sustain us and many other species. earth – to sustain us and many other species. Yet, discoveries in science – from origins of the universe to DNA – are reawakening awe and wonder, a convergence of science and faith, calling us to action.”

“There were only thirteen kids in my eighth grade at Westford,” Sarah remembers, “so my parents sent me to the Northfield School for Girls – now it’s part of Northfield Mount Hermon. The school was founded by 19th century evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. But, says Sarah, “In required Bible study, the teachers were looking for you to be thoughtful, and give reasons for a position, rather than espouse one.” Having been raised by Unitarian parents who emphasized combining reason and faith, Sarah dove right in, with a steady dialogue about the value of forgiveness, too.

At Smith College Sarah majored in religion – but almost in math. “I would ask the ‘stupid’ questions,” she says, “the elephant in the room that everyone was wondering about but thought everyone else understood.”

After college, Sarah earned a one-year fellowship for graduate study at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Within two weeks she had met David Reeves, and “almost immediately knew he was the one.” The feeling was completely mutual. While David, a year ahead of Sarah, finished at Union, she went to the University in Marburg, Germany for her second year. “It was one of my dreams to go back to Germany, where I’d been for the summer when I was sixteen,” Sarah says. Before tackling theological study in German, she went to Cologne for two months of language study. “The teacher befriended me, and on vacations we’d travel together to new places. We’d decide, ‘Let’s do Baroque’ or something.”

Sarah with husband Dave, and sons Ben and David

Upon Sarah’s return from Germany and Dave’s graduation from Union, they were married in Westford’s historic church. (They exited to find Sarah’s dad with a top hat and cigar on a tractor pulling a flatbed, used for apple boxes in the orchards, decorated and decked to carry the wedding party through the town.) They moved to Cambridge, where Dave started studies towards a PhD at Harvard, and Sarah, her final year towards an MDiv degree. “We moved into an apartment in Cambridge which we just loved, but my father thought it was a firetrap.”

Later they were back in Germany for David’s studies; Sarah taught English for Berlitz to earn their keep. “I had two classes in one place, for example, one for executives, who were so afraid to make a mistake, and another for some upper branch workers – foremen – and they went right at it. They learned so fast!” When Dave received a fellowship, she went to the University of Tübingen, to be better grounded in church history and the discipline of research.

Then David landed a teaching job at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Sarah worked through the Community Renewal Society as a “mission consultant” to a church on the North Side, in a parish where older German members were giving way to an influx of Hispanic parishioners. She also worked in an inner city youth job skills program.

When the couple’s first child, Rachel, was born, an error with anesthesia left her with severe cognitive and physical deficits. Sarah cared for her until she was three and a half, and then, in a heart-wrenching decision which turned out the best for all, sought residential care for their daughter. Rachel died at 20. Because of her potential expenses, Dave had been studying the stock market and investing; he fell in love with the financial markets. This became his career. He resigned from McCormick.

Sarah with her two brothers (two sisters not pictured)

The family was “looking for rootedness,” says Sarah. Her parents had retired early, moved to Vershire, and planted a new orchard, escaping sprawl in Massachusetts [see sidebar poem]. Her mother said, “You’re a country girl. Why don’t you look around here?” Visiting by herself late in 1983, Sarah found the Elm Street house. It was perfect: close to town, hilly (you can say that again!), good schools – their boys, David and Ben, were in elementary school – in the country, but “had some couth.”

Sarah worked in ministry, but then chose not to continue as a pastor because of wanting to spend time with her family. She earned a degree in landscape design and planning, focusing on native plants, and established her own business. When the Marion Cross expansion was finished there was no money for landscaping. Sarah was part of a push to raise money and involve every child in the school with the work. For ten years she worked with the Conservation Commission to inventory resources in town such as agricultural and forest land, and scenic spots; the inventories would be used for later town planning. She also served on the boards of the Upper Valley Land Trust and the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, as well as being the President of the Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions. Now Sarah is on the Energy Committee, but claims “merely to support the awesome work of Linda Gray and the others.”

Retirement recreations include writing poetry, taking pictures, and teaching courses on faith and spirituality in the OSHER@Dartmouth program. “The fun thing about teaching is you have to learn it!” she laughs. She turns serious when she talks about what she teaches. “The Buddhists have refined the techniques of meditation so it’s accessible to people of all faiths, and secular people, too,” she says. “Some people – Bill McKibben is one – are developing a new view of creation. It’s not anthropocentric. This incredible world that we marvel at – we’re not just stewards, but a part of the creation, a part of nature. We’re not here to dominate it.”

You probably know that the Lions Club runs the Norwich Fair each year, complete with rides, cotton candy, the dunk tank, a pig roast and even a Meadow Muffin competition. But you probably don’t know how many businesses help out behind the scenes, or how many local charities benefit from funds raised at the event.

It may surprise you. Over the past year, the Lions donated about $22,000 to nearly 30 charities ranging from the Red Logan Dental Clinic to Holiday Basket Helpers to the High Horses Therapeutic Riding Program. Well over 100 companies and individuals from the area made donations to help make last year’s fair one of the most successful ever. (See sidebar.) And that doesn’t count the dozens of volunteers who set up tents, sold tickets, got dunked in the dunk tank and generally kept things running smoothly.
“The last couple of years, the fair has looked more like the ones I remember from 40 years ago,” says Henry Scheier, a member of the club’s fair committee. “You see more people congregating and talking with each other, especially in the evening hours. That’s really important to the town, which seems to have become less community-oriented over the years.”

Widespread business participation certainly helps – whether it comes in the form of donations to the silent auction or cases of water for the Lions working the hospitality tent. The club has other events during the year to support charities and Christmas decorations and the Memory Tree on the bandstand, but the annual fair is key to its fundraising.
The club has sponsored the fair for the last 26 years. Prior to that, it was run for 40 years by the churches in town. Joyce Childs, King Lion (president) of the club, was chair of the Norwich Church Fair when it began to run out of gas.

“It was hard keeping it going,” Childs recalls. “Most people wanted to stop after 36 or 37 years, but I talked the old-timers into continuing into the 40th year, and then promised I wouldn’t ask them anymore.”

Joyce Childs and Dr. Daniel Kelly of Small Animal Emergency and Specialty

Henry Scheier mans the ticket booth

After that 40th year, Childs found the Lions Club eager to take over, and the deal was struck before you can say Meadow Muffin. “They were tickled to death to have it,” she says. “They used to sell light bulbs, but that didn’t raise much money.”

The light bulb sales were tied to one of the club’s core missions: to help the blind. That mission continues today, with collection boxes for used glasses at both Dan & Whit’s and the town clerk’s office.

But the fair gives the club the opportunity to do much more for the community and the charities that serve it. Lion Richard Neugass is especially proud of the club’s support of the Marion Cross School, funding projects outside the normal budgeted facilities and curriculum. For example, the Lions fund trips to the Valley Terrace Senior Center, and educational programs for kids at the Norwich Historical Society. It also supports a one-on-one lunchtime reading program, tree planting and the providing of skates for those needing to borrow them to participate in the PTO’s community skating events at the rink on the Green.

At Lions Club meetings (6:30 p.m. on the first and third Tuesdays of each month downstairs in the library), representatives of local non-profits are invited to speak and make members aware of their activities. This not only helps build synergies among like-minded people, it helps club members decide which charities to support. If you’re interested in joining or learning more, come to a meeting.

Did you know the Norwich Business Council (NBC) was  started over a decade ago? Sally Wilson and other local business leaders felt there was a need for the business community to come together, providing an avenue of community outreach, business networking, and supporting each other as good neighbors. During the early years, these leaders began the tradition of making holiday decorations for the downtown light posts.

The NBC has come a long way since its early days. It is a vibrant and relevant piece of the Norwich business community. Although it no longer makes holiday decorations, the Norwich Business Council’s support of local endeavors is far reaching. This is clearly shown with the recent success of the “19 Days of Norwich.” NBC member Dan Fraser spearheaded this endeavor which has raised over a quarter million dollars for the Upper Valley Haven. Dan’s inspiration motivated members of NBC to do their part by organizing, volunteering, and contributing. Thanks to this effort, enough food and money has been donated to provide the Haven with what they need for over a year!

The NBC meets at 8:15 a.m. on the second Friday of each month at the Norwich Inn. It is there that a committed group of leaders brainstorm, plan, and create dynamic events and programs that benefit the Norwich community.

One of the community outreach projects is the “Norwich Welcome Bags.” These are very attractive canvas bags filled with goodies donated by Norwich businesses. They are hand-delivered to new residents of Norwich to welcome them to the community so they feel welcome, and know what businesses are nearby to serve them.

Cheryl Herrmann with the Norwich Welcome bag

One of NBC’s most memorable events is the Spring Business Blitz, which this year will be held on April 1st at the Montshire Museum. This event has had a fun history over the past five years and generates great enthusiasm and interest. The NBC collaborates with the Hartford Chamber of Commerce in this event. The style is that of “speed dating.” It begins with about a half-hour of casual networking and socializing with other business leaders while enjoying delicious appetizers and drinks – and then the serious networking begins! Everyone is divided into two groups, and then seated in pairs. Each person has 60 seconds to share their elevator speech – introducing themselves, describing their business, exchanging business cards, and seeing if there are ways they can work with each other. After the two minutes, a bell is rung and people move to the next chair to meet someone else. It’s a lot of fun, and a boundless opportunity to meet new people and learn about the products or services they provide. Frankly, it is amazing how many unique and creative businesses are located in the Upper Valley!

This year the NBC is pleased to offer its members several great opportunities to showcase their business. At monthly meetings, everyone is given a chance to speak with other community leaders. Members often share their ideas, insights, new undertakings and promotions they are offering, or they can ask for advice from other experienced business owners.

Additionally, individuals can sign up to make a 10-15 minute educational presentation at the monthly meetings to share their expertise with the group. Recent presentations have taught how to use Facebook and LinkedIn as business networking tools, and how a coach can help guide business growth and other issues. These presentations are an instructive and inspiring time, and give attendees great ideas that they can implement in their own endeavors.

Norwich Welcome bag goodies

This year will see the reintroduction of “NBC’s ABCs” which is shorthand for the After Business Connections. An NBC ABC is an opportunity for a business to host a social event for local business networking. These events can take place either before or after business hours at the convenience of the business host. Small, home-office businesses that cannot readily handle a large gathering can team up with another business that has more space and co-host an NBC ABC. The NBC strongly believes that this is a great avenue to bring local business leaders together with the opportunity to build relationships, get fresh ideas, and learn from each other.

One way the NBC promotes all Norwich businesses state-wide is by providing each of the Vermont Welcome Centers with “Discover Norwich” rack cards. The goal is to attract tourists to Norwich who were previously unaware of what is offered. “Come visit, come eat, come play and stay!” is a promoted theme. All Norwich businesses that are members of the Hanover Area Chamber of Commerce (HACC) are individually listed on the card. A QRcode on the back of the card is linked to the Norwich page of the HACC website, so visitors can get a business’ contact information, directions and hours of operation in order to plan their visit.

Finally, and what makes the Norwich Business Council a truly community-building entity is that it is free and open to any local business. It readily welcomes large businesses such as Dan & Whit’s and the local banks, to smaller operations and home-based offices such as Body Kneads Massage and Lufkin Graphic Designs, respectively. The NBC invites any small business owner to attend the meetings and get a feel for what it’s all about. New ideas and a passion for the Norwich community are welcomed and encouraged. After all, local business is critical to Norwich’s economic success and to the strengthening of the community fabric of Norwich!