Destination
20/20 
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Here to visit the official Destination 2020 Website!Overview Destination 2020, a community-wide visioning initiative sponsored by Leadership Augusta, has created a vision to guide the Metro Augusta area for the next 20 years. Although Destination 2020 is broad in its scope it has held a very simple mission: to paint a picture of what we want the future to be. This was accomplished by encouraging broad based community participation through a series of 9 town hall meetings held at locations around Metro Augusta. A professional meeting facilitator, Civic Strategies, Inc., led these meetings to ensure all participants had an opportunity to contribute. An extra session was held at Langford Middle School, where 27 8th graders participated. Participants were asked to "Imagine that the year is 2020 and that Time Magazine is sending reporter to Metro Augusta to write a cover story on how Metro Augusta came to be regarded as the "model" or "ideal" mid-sized region in the country - the region other mid-sized communities around the community wanted to be like. The facilitator then asked them to answer the following questions: According to TIME magazine, what is it that makes Metro Augusta such an ideal region? What photographs appear with the article to show why Augusta is so successful? A sampling of answers to the "vision" questions were:
Participants were also asked the question: "What existing assets could be used to make Metro Augusta a success in the year 2020? Some of their responses were:
Finally, participants were asked the question at the core of the community visioning process: "What does Metro Augusta need to do or create in order to become the ideal region in 2020? Participants wrote their answers on response cards, and a total of 642 ideas were generated from all of the town hall meetings. The ones generating the most ideas were: Transportation, Citizenship/Leadership, and Education. Civic Strategies compiled all of the data and identified 27 distinct subject areas. From these subject areas we established 11 main Taskforces and 12 Sub-Taskforces, for a total of 23 working taskforce committees. The responsibility of these taskforces was to review the information collected from the participants of the town hall meetings, and create a draft vision statements for each significant area of concern. Now that the vision is complete, Taskforce teams are being created to begin the work of making the vision become a reality. The formation of this Phase II of Destination 2020, is underway and open to local citizens who want to be involved. If you would like a copy of the vision or are interested in volunteering, please contact Angela Hillesland, Public Relations Manager for Jim Hudson Lexus and Destination 2020 Volunteer Coordinator at 650-3203. |