CLINTON — Gisele Hamm has been helping small towns improve their qualities of life for some 14 years now.  Most have been successful.  She gauges the potential a town has by the number of people who show up to the organizational meetings and by asking questions.  But, ultimately, what she wants to know is, do they have the will to make it happen?

On Tuesday night, Hamm addressed a group of about 20 people from the community, which included primarily local government, agency and organization representatives, and a few local business people.  So far, it’s promising. She said the Clinton turnout for her presentation was encouraging and a good base of volunteers for a beginning.

She told them what it would take to start planning and implementing a plan for the future of the community.  Hamm is manager of the MAPPING program for the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs, based at Western Illinois University, Macomb.  MAPPING is not about actual maps, it’s a management and planning program.

The program isn’t about just planting a few flowers around a downtown, Hamm said.  The program, in fact, can help communities address a myriad of issues, including economic development, education, housing, transportation, renewable energy, business data and technical support, and sustainable agriculture, among others.

“It really has to be a grass roots effort,” Hamm said.  This is because the small, rural towns she works with aren’t able to hire a slew of community planning experts.

That’s where her program comes in.  It helps local leaders and volunteers do the planning, and hopefully implementing, of improvements with minimal cost.

The program has helped about 130 rural communities in Illinois.  Some in the area include Atlanta, Argenta, Lincoln and Maroa.  Maroa is one of the communities to engage the program more than once, in 2000 and again in 2012.

“Communities from a couple of hundred people up to a couple of thousand,” Hamm said.  Lincoln, which used the program in 1992, has a population of about 14,000.  Hamm worked with Mattoon, a city of about 18,000 people, in 1994, and city leaders there have expressed interest in asking for her help again.

Hamm emphasized, however, that the success or failure of a community in search of revitalization depends much on the level of local engagement, excitement and optimism about accomplishing something.

“Some communities are simply resistant to change,” she said.  “But you don’t have to do it; survival is not mandatory.”

That level of engagement has been directly reflected in the final outcome of the improvement projects.  She said some communities she worked with did not necessarily have “the greatest engagement.”

“If you refuse to change, and you have the same mentality, chances are you won’t see change,” Hamm said.

Hamm also said it was vital to involve young people so that they would want to stay or to return after college, and to encourage people who might consider moving here.

“We have to know what young people in our communities want,” she said.  Millennials tend to go where there’s a high quality of life.”

This quality includes available recreation, cultural and educational opportunities.

On a basic, practical level, Hamm described a small, central Illinois town of about 400 people that managed to implement changes that made it possible to attract a Marathon gasoline station and Subway restaurant.  But, the program can encompass as much or as little as the community has the interest in or will to accomplish.

The overall goal is to help return a community to at state of prosperity.

“The test of healthy communities is their ability to recapture their lost prosperity,” Hamm said.

And, cost shouldn’t be an obstacle to developing and implementing a plan.

While some small communities might balk at first at the cost of creating a plan, in fact, with grants factored in, Clinton would pay a little over $4,600 to finance the plan.  And, in communities that have been successful, most or all of that cost was covered by donations and fundraising efforts.  Hamm said even the smallest of the towns she has helped had little problem raising the funding for the plan.

If a community is afraid of the cost, an improvement plan probably is going to gain any traction, she suggested.

Ultimately, a plan to improve a community lies almost exclusively with people getting involved.  It also lies in follow-through.

Hamm said there had to be strong leadership and organizational structure, widespread community support, follow-through with documented results, a view of how the community fits into the region and …perseverance.