Together for Beaufort

Executive Summary

Together for Beaufort is an intensive community-wide process to identify issues confronting the citizens of Beaufort County. It further develops a series of indicators that will allow us, together, to monitor progress as we address these issues.


This report will provide a valuable resource for the entire community, influencing development decisions, assisting organizations in their planning, and encouraging dialogue among citizens to bring about community change.

The “Together for Beaufort” process is a community- wide effort to prepare a better future for our citizens. Over the past year, the public, private and nonprofit agencies, along with interested citizens from throughout the county, teamed up to implement a process to establish clear goals by which progress can be measured. The resulting goals describe aspirational qualities for Beaufort County’s people and families, the communities and the place we share. Progress toward each of the goals will be measured by a total of 16 community indicators.

The purpose of “Together for Beaufort” is to help our citizens, communities, public officials, agencies and organizations come together as one community to address these important goals. Progress requires the collective efforts of the public (government), private (business), nonprofit (organizations) and faith community sectors to join together in broad collaborations that address the pressing needs of our community.

As we move toward implementation, we must encourage public, private, nonprofit and faith organizations and agencies to form collaborations that will address these challenges. Together we can address gaps in the systems, build efficiencies, gain understanding and address our collective responsibilities to the community we share.

Methodology

Public input drawn from interviews served as a starting point to creating consensus on the most pressing issues facing Beaufort County. These interviews began a community dialogue to determine the issues that affect the quality of life in our county. The data collected around these issues was based on the input received from key experts who took part in the focus groups and assisted in the collection of information.

Many local, state, and national agencies accumulate and report the quantitative data necessary for benchmarking in the Community Indicators. Rates per population and percentages are often used to compare county data to state and national data. When calculating rates per population, U.S. Census Bureau population estimates were used. When the data collection method does not allow for direct comparison, state and national information is noted in the text.

Primary sources include the Bureau of Economic Analysis, South Carolina Office of Research and Statistics, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, South Carolina Department of Education, U.S. Administration on Aging and the Centers for Disease Control and Clemson University. The source for each indicator is noted in the text.
The four Focus Groups representing individuals from across Beaufort County, reviewed issues concerning people, families, communities and place. The groups were comprised of representatives from the public, private, nonprofit and faith sectors who have significant roles as professionals or volunteers within each focus area. In a series of meetings, the groups suggested data available to further the benchmarking process and discussed community-wide goals for review by the Steering Committee.

The Steering Committee was comprised of leadership from across the county. In a series of three meetings, the group reviewed available data and the input from the Focus Groups and debated Focus Group drafts to arrive at goals and community indicators to benchmark progress. As a group, the Steering Committee members were unanimous in recommending that collaborations be pursued among agencies capable of leading a community-wide effort to bring about an improved level of
understanding, leverage community investment and directly address these goals.

The Focus Groups’ criteria for selecting the indicators stated that each must be:

In setting the community-wide goals, the Steering Committee used the following criteria:

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Together for Beaufort provides information about the status of our community and points to a range of strategic issues that, if addressed, could greatly improve our county. By sharing this information we hope to provide a common ground for public, private, and nonprofit leaders to engage the public in a dialogue about how we can work together to address these and other related issues. The first step is to share this information and ask ourselves the hard questions about what causes conditions in our county to get better or worse.

We, as individuals, can educate ourselves through this publication. Through our individual and collective research and armed with knowledge, we can become advocates for community change.

There are several factors about the Community Indicators that should be kept in mind as you study them: