Have you ever needed to research information on Bryan County?
Whether it is for a school project, grant writing, or just plain old curiosity – there are tons of twists and turns local residents will take at the library or online as they embark on a local fact-finding mission.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a one-stop shop for most all of the data on the community?
Bryan County Family Connection Coordinator Wendy Sims contemplated that same question.
Each year, BCFC is tasked with compiling community data. This information includes statistics on the local population, economy and employment, in order to help direct them to the needs of the community as well as to assist them in writing grants.
Sims decided, for the first time, it was important to make all this data available to the public via a link on the BCFC website.
The document is called the Bryan County Community Profile and is available now at www.gafcp.org/fcnetwork/bryan .
"The Community Profile is a very important tool that anyone in county can now use," Sims said. "At the same time we were compiling all this data, we were revamping the website. I just thought ‘wouldn’t it be great to make all this data available on the site?’ There are just so many purposes this information could serve for such a wide variety of fields."
Did you know that the amount of males is almost dead even with the amount of females in Bryan County, or that 2.4 percent of Bryan County residents are Hispanic?
How about the fact that the average local household income is around $54,000, while 10 percent of Bryan County residents live in poverty?
Those are just a few out of hundreds of facts that are available through the new link.
The profile was compiled by Catherine Kostilnik, president of the Center for Community Studies out of LaGrange.
"The Bryan County Community Profile was attained by looking at a wide variety of data sources," Kostilnik said. "We looked for most current information. BCFC distributes surveys and those came into play as well."
Kostilnik, who does fact-finding for other area Family Connection groups as well, added that she is particularly impressed with the Bryan County group.
"I work with 30 other Family Connection groups, and I can tell you that BCFC is one of the best ones out there. The collaborative in that group has so many different facets of community services, such as law enforcement, business, and outreach groups. Some Family Connection collaboratives have just a few, but the one in Bryan County has a broad base which can only be seen as a positive in being effective in that community."