Hi, my name is Keyara Hamilton. I’m with the Valdosta Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce and I serve as a director of business and workforce development. One of the programs that I coordinate is called Opportunity Central, and Opportunity Central is pretty self-explanatory when you look at the words we’re all about – which we focus on: creating more opportunities in the Metro Valdosta vicinity. And what I mean by that is where we’re aiming to grow jobs in the Valdosta or the Metro Valdosta area. And we are doing that by focusing on three sectors, which is of the knowledge-based sectors; and those are information technology, environmental technology and medical support and services.  

Now, we didn’t just pull these sectors out of the air, Georgia Tech University actually conducted the study to validate that. And the reason why we’re focusing on this area to grow jobs is we also want to improve or increase the average weekly wage. Since 2008 to date, we’ve actually increased jobs by over 4000 in those three sectors; and the way that we facilitate that is through some of the programs under Opportunity Central, which is our IT network, IT Pros Network. Also our renewable sustainable energy network is the ways that we are really facilitating that. 

Another component of this is the MetroOne Young Professionals Network, where we wanted to create an environment here in Metro Valdosta that, of course, we’re attracting young professionals to this area but we want them after they attain their education from our Technical Universities here. We want to keep that here in Valdosta, and so we’re making Valdosta to be a more attractive area for these young professionals. 

One of the projects of that particular network this year has been the release of the – or unveiling of the 100 Fine Things To Do In Metro Valdosta, promoting the assets here in Metro Valdosta. We want these young professionals to live here, to stay here, to retire here in this area. A majority of these young professionals are the ones that are getting these degrees in a knowledge-based areas. For more information about Opportunity Central please visit www.opportunitycentral.net, and for MetroOne Young Professionals please feel free to visit our website www.metroonevaldosta.com.