You’re welcome
Bryant Chamber project provides information for city’s new residents, promotes ‘community’
For Rae Ann Fields, executive director of the Bryant Area Chamber of Commerce, “community” is more than a word found in the dictionary — more than the population of a town or its spirit at a Friday-night football game.
To Fields, “community” is what the town does for its people to make them feel at home.
Fields, who is starting her 17th year with the chamber, moved to Bryant 30 years ago and has continued a nearly 20-year tradition of handing out welcome bags filled with information on local businesses and organizations to those who are new to the area.
Fields said the bags help the residents know they “are welcome.”
“When people come here from somewhere else, they have disrupted their buying habits and need to establish new patterns,” she said. “It’s important that we put them very quickly and comfortably with our business people, and it’s important to our businesses that they connect with these new people coming into town. We want everyone to get plugged in and give our local businesses a boost, too.”
However, newcomers are not the only ones who benefit from the welcome bags.
“They are given out at [the Bryant Water Department],” Fields said, “so anyone who turns on their water for the first time gets a bag. But aside from us paying people to go to everyone’s homes, which isn’t very effective like it used to be, there’s no better mechanism to reach out to people.”
The Bryant Area Chamber of Commerce has more than 450 members, ranging from the Bryant School District to tax services and restaurants.
Although the chamber tries to be “the voice, the advocate and the promoter for all the people who do business in Bryant,” the welcome bags are filled with more than just business cards.
“As far as requirements go, we ask for coupons and small items,” Fields said. “Midtown Church gave us small carabiners — mini clips for people to hook their keys onto — and the Childcare Network provided temporary tattoos, so even the kids find something.”
Cheryl Smith, an administrative assistant for the chamber, delivers the bags to the water department once a month, usually around the 20th, but Fields said there are times when the chamber receives phone calls within two weeks because the department’s supply is running low.
But not every bag contains the same goodies.
“Geyer Springs Baptist Church drops items off once a year, and it is always a seasonal item. Right now we have ice scrapers,” Fields said. “I mean, how cool is it to be able to move someplace new and walk outside to an icy car but not have to dig through boxes to find an ice scraper because a local business or organization gave you one?”
Other businesses have gotten clever with their selections of items, too.
Sports Clips donated combs with the business’s phone number; Adams Pest Control contributed fly swatters; and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Pulaski Technical College donated school supplies, such as pencils and highlighters.
However, not all businesses that contribute items are from Bryant.
“We don’t draw a boundary around the city,” Fields said. “We have a member in Texarkana, and the Hot Springs Village Association drops off items that make people aware of [the Village’s] great golf courses that aren’t far from here.”
Although Fields and Smith don’t get to see the reactions of those receiving the bags, the women often hear from businesses that new residents have expressed appreciation for the welcome bags, a key reason for continued donations.
“My own pastor, the Rev. Dari Rowan at First Presbyterian in Benton, pulled me aside after service one time to tell me how much she appreciated what she received when she moved to the area,” Fields said.
According to the Bryant Parks and Recreation’s Master Plan for 2014, the Gadberry Group, a geographic mapping service in Little Rock, named this suburb of Little Rock the second-fasting growing city in Arkansas. But Fields said the city’s growth, up nearly 3,000 since the 2010 census, doesn’t take away from Bryant’s smalltown feel.
“I moved to Bryant in 1984, and the population was around 4,000 people, and now we have roughly 19,000,” she said. “But I don’t think the sense of community has changed, and I think that says a lot. Some places grow and lose that hometown feel, but I think we’ve done a great job of holding on to it.”
When Fields moved to the geographical center of Arkansas, her work with the chamber was voluntary but was a way for her and her family to be active in their community. Even though her children have moved away, she said she couldn’t imagine not being involved in the community in some way.
Fields said many people assume the chamber works for the city, but the chamber is “really trying to be the voice, the advocate and the promoter for all the people who do business here. No matter the size of Bryant, we work very hard to maintain that sense of community. That’s what these bags are for, to make people feel welcome.”
For more information or to become a member of the Bryant Chamber of Commerce, call (501) 847-4702 or visit
www.BryantChamber.com.