Collaboration the key to our shared success, opportunity
As the mayor of Bakersfield, one of my top priorities is creating opportunities for our citizens to rise up and thrive. While much work remains, I’m grateful for our efforts to pursue inclusive growth and economic development through B3K Prosperity.
The Bakersfield-Kern County region has never seen a collaborative effort like B3K Prosperity. Through B3K, community-based organizations, county and city governments, industry, labor, K-12 and higher education leaders have come together around the same table to focus on a shared goal: increasing the number of quality jobs in our region, so that fewer local families struggle to make ends meet. While the process takes time, we are making significant progress toward a shared vision of deep prosperity.
One of the most important drivers of regional competitiveness and economic dynamism is a skilled workforce. Unfortunately, our region’s relatively low educational attainment has constrained income growth and economic mobility. It has also reduced our ability to attract sufficient investment in industries that provide good, middle-class jobs for local residents. We’ve heard from stakeholders in disadvantaged communities that we need local educational experiences that offer more accessible pathways to better jobs.
We welcomed the news last month when Governor Newsom announced an $18 million grant to the newly formed Kern Regional K16 Educational Collaborative. The grant will help expand local students’ access to higher education and strengthen pathways to quality jobs in healthcare, education, business management, engineering and computing careers: the exact type of programs and initiatives our B3K research indicated we need.
The collaborative, led by Dr. Mary Barlow and the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, includes CSUB, UC Merced and UCLA, local community colleges, 46 K-12 districts, industry, labor and community-based organizations, as well as B3K Prosperity.
The grant resulted from an unprecedented level of local collaboration and cooperation. When we set aside our individual priorities and work together toward a shared agenda, we can accomplish great things.
On the heels of this announcement, our community has another opportunity for deep collaboration and cooperation as we seek a local grant from the state of California’s Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF). In the coming months, CERF will award millions of dollars to regions throughout California in an effort to fund projects that support economic resilience and promote economic diversification, sustainability and equity.
The state has been organized into 13 regions for CERF. We’re doubly fortunate that Kern County is in a region all of its own and that the governor himself has recognized B3K Prosperity as a statewide model for the type of collaboration CERF intends to support.
B3K is currently leading an effort to convene local stakeholders and develop a collaborative planning grant application that will best represent the needs of our region and align proposed grant funding initiatives with feedback and input from disadvantaged communities and others who represent groups that haven’t historically been engaged with economic development.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the educational collaborative grant, it is that our region is strongest when we come together. As we head into the depths of the CERF grant application process, we must continue to strengthen existing bonds while also forging new ones. Our region must collectively be known for its unity and commitment to a shared vision of inclusive growth. We need one another.
B3K hosted its first virtual Community Meeting on May 26. More community meetings and stakeholder feedback sessions will be planned in the future. We welcome everyone with an interest in the future of our region to attend. To receive notifications of future meetings and opportunities to provide feedback, visit b3kprosperity.org and join the B3K email list.
Together, united with one voice, let us create a future for the Bakersfield-Kern County region where every one of our neighbors has the opportunity and pathways to prosper and thrive.