The GO Virginia Region One Council is seeking your assistance in identifying the region’s strengths, challenges and opportunities in order to diversify and grow the economy in Southwest Virginia.
The GO Virginia Region One Council is in the process of updating the Region One Growth and Diversification Plan, initially released in the summer of 2017. The Growth and Diversification Plan identifies economic opportunities, needs and challenges in Region One, while establishing priorities among opportunities and outlining needed enhancements that can be supported by GO Virginia grant funds.
The Virginia Initiative for Growth and Opportunity (GO Virginia) is a bipartisan, business-led economic development initiative that is changing the way Virginia’s diverse regions collaborate on economic and workforce development activities. The objective of GO Virginia is to promote the creation of high-wage careers, private sector job growth and diversification across the Commonwealth through incentivized collaboration between business, education and government. GO Virginia provides grant funding for regional projects that align with the GO Virginia mission, as well as each region’s industry targets and strategies.
Region One includes the counties of Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe; and the cities of Bristol, Galax and Norton. Projects in Region One will focus on growing and strengthening industry sectors such as advanced manufacturing, agriculture & food manufacturing, information & emerging technologies and energy & minerals through activities such as talent development and retention, increasing innovation and entrepreneurship and infrastructure development. In order to provide regional input for the updated Plan, a survey is being conducted to accomplish the following:
1) Collect community input on the state of the Region One economy 2) Gather ideas and identify best practices and priorities for economic growth Please complete the survey here. The survey should take about 10–15 minutes to complete and will be open until July 12, 2019. Please share the survey link with your contacts and encourage their involvement. All responses will be kept strictly confidential.