| 316 W. Commerce St. | Hernando, Mississippi | 38632 | 662-429-4414 | fax 429-0952 |  |
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Leadership DeSoto Update
The seventeenth Leadership DeSoto class is well underway, and once again the group is made up of outstanding individuals who represent their businesses and community well.
{insert scanned photo}This year’s class began November 15 and 16 with a two-day intensive session of leadership training and teambuilding skills. Facilitator Kevin Russell led the group through exercises designed to identify each person’s leadership style and to show how to solve problems from a different perspective. The class members, most of whom had come to the program as strangers, began to slowly get to know each other. The Parkwood Ropes Course shattered any ice that may have been left as the group had to work together to solve various challenges presented at the course.
On December 7, the group boarded a bus in Hernando and took a tour of DeSoto County. The tour included a stop at Sacred Heart League, where the group took a tour of the facility and learned the history of the League, its missions, and just how many millions of pieces of mail are generated and mailed from the facility every year. Joining the Leadership DeSoto class on the bus were Representatives Wanda Jennings and John Mayo, who talked about their experiences in the Mississippi Legislature. During lunch, the class also heard from Representatives Forrest Hamilton and Ted Mayhall.
Now that the class is familiar with the geography and some of the highlights of DeSoto County, they will begin to learn about opportunities and challenges facing them as leaders of the community over the next several months. Beginning in January, the class will hear from professionals in economic development, education, healthcare, local government, and the legal system.
At the first meeting, the class was divided into three project groups. One group will work on a project dealing with the Johnson Creek Greenway. The group will design a plan for dissemination of information to the public about the greenway, which will stretch from Star Landing Road and follow Johnson Creek for approximately 10 miles to the Twin Lakes Subdivision in Horn Lake. The group will work with DCRUA and Entergy, whose right-of-way easements will be utilized to create the greenway, which will server as a walking, biking and equestrian trail. Another group will work with the DeSoto County Planning Commission to disseminate information to the public about air quality and how the issue relates to quality of life in DeSoto County. The third group will work to create a report comparing the cost of living in DeSoto County to that in Memphis and Shelby County.
For more information about Leadership DeSoto, click here.