McDonald County A Work Ready Community
Shawn Cooper of Anderson became president of the McDonald County Chamber of Commerce this year and he is off and running with many plans and goals for the Chamber.
McDonald County has achieved official designation as a Certified Work Ready Community offering high-speed fiber access.
Cooper said the McDonald County Chamber of Commerce was awarded the ACT Certified Work Ready Communities and was certified as Fiber Ready and certified as a “Work Ready Commu nity” by the McDonald County Phone and Internet Services at the McDonald County campus of Crowder College on Friday.
“We are very proud of both of these awards. With these two distinctions in place, McDonald County is able to offer companies both a skilled, ready and stable workforce as well as state of the art fiber optics,” Cooper said.
“The McDonald County Telephone and Internet services Fiber Ready designation provides a pro-business recruiting tool to help drive economic growth and create jobs.”
Cooper said a main goal of the Chamber is to help business owners network and grow in McDonald County.
“One of the valuable services the Chamber is currently offering business owners is web development training and assistance,” Cooper said. “The Chamber will be a consulting service regarding how to get a website up and running.”
“The McDonald County Chamber of Commerce partnered with the McDonald County School District and local business leaders to take a closer look at the skills needed in our workforce to attract businesses to our area and to develop jobs.”
“By developing jobs,” Cooper said, “we can help people come out of poverty.” Cooper said this is one of his main goals.
McDonald County is a great place to raise children. We have one of the top high schools in the state. And we want to keep our young people here.”
“A great asset is that business in McDonald County has access to higher quality networks and the county can use the availability of fiber connectivity to recruit new companies and opportunity for existing business to expand their customer base—for a rural community to have this type of infrastructure is rare.”
“The Chamber released a tourism video highlighting McDonald County as a destination place highlighting the canoeing and rivers and has received over 100,000 views,” Cooper said. “We believe this benefited the local community and helps increase local commerce and tourism traffic count. We are currently working on a video for the McDonald County Business Expo — we expect it to be as successful.”
Founded in 1959, ACT is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. ACT provides a broad array of assessment, research, information and program management solutions in the areas of education and workforce development.