Thursday, the Winchester-Clark County Chamber of Commerce hosted its 78th annual banquet, where businesses, volunteers and others were honored for their contributions to the community.

Awards were presented for Citizen of the Year, Director of the Year, Community Partner of the Year, Community Service and more.

While the event serves as a great annual networking opportunity for the many Chamber members, it is also important to see the Chamber recognize some outstanding members each year.

However, something more came from comments made at this year’s banquet.

During some opening remarks, Brett Cheuvront, an active community volunteer and administrative coordinator at The Greater Clark Foundation, challenged those in attendance to be “cheerleaders” for our community. And Cheuvront’s sentiments were echoed later in the evening as Industrial Authority Executive Director Todd Denham presented the Business of the Year Award to Sekisui S-LEC.

As Cheuvront noted, every community has its challenges, and those are what people often talk about and harp on.

Especially in an election season, we hear time and again what needs to be fixed in our community. This year, we’ve heard a lot from candidates about the need for good-paying jobs, a solution for our terrible drug epidemic and the crime, poverty and family issues that come with it, the need for population growth and for recreational opportunities for our children.

All of those challenges are present and should not be ignored. They’re issues that certainly need to be addressed, particularly in all levels of government and policy-making.

But often how a community perceives itself has more power than many would think.

If we begin to define ourselves only by our flaws, we often begin to forget our strengths.

We forget that we do have some good-paying jobs (more are always welcome). We neglect that we have a downtown district that is seeing growth and investments. We ignore that we have a distinguished school district with a nearly 99 percent graduation rate of college- and career-ready students. And there’s much more good about our community we might miss.

Being “cheerleaders” for our community is as important as acknowledging our challenges.

In fact, if we adopt the same team mentality of cheerleaders, if we begin cheering each other on and working together, we will have a greater chance of improving the quality of life in our community.

So we say, “Go Clark County!”

 

Editorials represent the opinion of the newspaper’s editorial board. The board is comprised of publisher Michael Caldwell and managing editor Whitney Leggett. To inquire about a meeting with the board, contact Caldwell at 759-0095.