Submitted by  Jody Love

HBCAT/RCP

President and CEO

To Our Communities and Partners:

“We’re not working to win Kansas. We’re working for Kansas to win.”

I recently heard Destany Wheeler with Elevate Kansas share this sentiment, and it perfectly captures how I feel about our work in Southeast Kansas.

We believe in abundance. We are not chasing recognition or competing for credit or resources. We are working for this region to succeed on its own terms. That belief carried us through a year marked by both meaningful progress and significant hardship.

In 2025, we navigated funding uncertainty, shifting policies, and economic pressures affecting families, businesses, and organizations across the region. We experienced pauses, delays, and moments that required us to rethink timelines and approaches. Quite frankly, this was a hard year. Each time we took a hit, we pivoted, picked ourselves up, and moved forward, guided by community need and shared responsibility.

At the Healthy Bourbon County Action Team, we remained deeply committed to our mission: increasing access to physical activity and healthy food, promoting commercial tobacco cessation, enhancing quality of life, and encouraging economic growth. These priorities are not abstract goals. They are shaped by the lived experiences of residents across Southeast Kansas.

We are equally committed to responding to priorities identified by residents who live the reality of these decisions every day. Community trust, resident leadership, and equity remain central to how we design, implement, and sustain our work.

That commitment is visible through Rural Community Partners and our work to find, connect, and engage small business owners and entrepreneurs across Southeast Kansas. We meet entrepreneurs where they are, connect them to the right expertise, capital, and networks, and ensure they are not navigating fragmented systems alone. This approach reduces barriers, builds trust, and helps entrepreneurs move forward with clarity and confidence.

Despite the challenges, we expanded small business and entrepreneurship support, delivered hands-on technical assistance, helped unlock new capital, and strengthened workforce development partnerships. Together with Rural Community Partners, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, and Balloon Media, we elevated regional storytelling. With support from Kansas University Medical Center, we convened partners across counties and continued building coalitions focused on practical, community-led solutions. Our role as a regional convener and backbone organization grew, not because it was easy, but because it was necessary.

We also invested in the long view by advancing the Southeast Kansas Small Business and Entrepreneurship Endowment. This commitment to sustainability allows us to lead with integrity rather than urgency, remain accountable to communities rather than funding cycles, and speak honestly when systems fall short. It is a promise to Southeast Kansas that this work will endure.

We are change agents, and with that comes a responsibility to speak up when systems no longer serve the communities they were designed to support.

What makes our work different, and why does it endure locally and regionally where many well-intended efforts have struggled? Three things have mattered most:

1. We remain financially independent and are not reliant on local or regional gatekeepers.
2. Our work is guided by community need rather than access, favors, or external approval.
3. We are willing to say what others won’t, even when it risks relationships, status, or funding.

Looking ahead to 2026, our vision is clear. 

We will continue scaling entrepreneurship and mentorship efforts, strengthened by our partnership with the KU School of Business, Kansas Food Action Network, and BCBS Pathways to Healthy Kansas, while expanding access to capital and expertise. Working alongside partners such as WorkforceONE, we will deepen workforce pathways by listening directly to local employers. By supporting locally driven solutions, we will build resilience across counties while protecting the trust and relationships that make progress possible.

This role requires resilience, clarity, and courage. As Virginia Barnes, BCBS Pathways Director, reminded me earlier this year, it means acknowledging setbacks without being defined by them. It means staying focused on long-term impact and believing in the capacity of Southeast Kansas, even when circumstances test that belief.

Thank you to our partners, funders, donors, and residents who continue to stand with us.

Together, we are not working to win Southeast Kansas. We are working for Southeast Kansas to win.