ThinkTV: Regional Town Hall from local roots

A recently cultivated partnership between the Tipp City Foundation (TCF) and local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) station ThinkTV/CET is designed to help foster a workforce readiness initiative in Southwest Ohio. The collaboration is an effort to help train a competent local workforce in the ways of emerging careers and technologies and keep them rooted in the local community.

The Foundation has granted $18,000 to ThinkTV’s production of “Workforce Ready: The Future is Now,” a one-hour public television Town Hall focused on workforce development across Southwest Ohio. This is the first Town Hall in a series of four in the “Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community” program with a total budget of $75,000 and an anticipated completion date of June 30, 2027.

Costs for the first episode were fully covered through the Tipp City based grant awards, with $10,000 coming from the Foundation itself, $4,000 from the Walter Caton Fund advisors and $4,000 from the Lucky 13 Fund advisors. Grants usually stay local according to the Foundation’s Heather Bailey, but grantmaking will reach beyond the 45371-zip code when the impact touches the residents of Tipp City and Bethel Township, she said.

“Southwest Ohio has long been a place defined by innovation, ingenuity and a strong work ethic,” said Rodney Veal, TV host and community liaison with ThinkTV. “Today, those qualities remain as important as ever. While the Dayton and Cincinnati regions continue to experience economic growth and attract new investment, employers across multiple sectors report ongoing challenges in finding the skilled talent needed to sustain that growth.”

The project is intended to educate the public about workforce readiness, highlight collaboration among education, business and workforce organizations and promote awareness of career opportunities and workforce development efforts throughout the region, including communities served by the TCF.

“We felt it was important to support public broadcasting in our region; ThinkTV provides a valuable community resource,” Jim Ranft, TCF distribution chairman, indicated was the reason behind the collaboration between the two entities. “Second, the workforce development theme was a great fit with a number of the grant requests we’ve been seeing recently. We’ve supported projects involving career exploration, nursing, technical education and manufacturing, so ‘Workforce Ready: The Future Is Now’ connected naturally with work we were already supporting.”

Finally, Ranft said the Foundation saw an opportunity to bring some of its nonprofit partners into the collaboration.

“We already had relationships with Edison State and the Miami County ESC (Educational Service Center), so we could make those introductions and help ThinkTV connect with people doing this work locally,” he continued. “At the same time, ThinkTV could give those organizations a broader platform to tell their stories and spread the word about the good work they’re doing in our community.”

Workforce development has historically occurred in two forms: place-based strategies that attempt to address the needs of people living in a particular community, and sector-based strategies that focus on matching workers' skills to needs in an industry already present in the region.

“Bottom line is that workforce readiness is a hot topic in the entire region and the Tipp City Foundation is fortunate to be in the position to match ThinkTV with educators at Edison State and MCESC so that local footage will appear in the regional broadcast,” Bailey said.

During the past five years, the Foundation has awarded nearly $100,000 to projects connected in different ways to workforce development. Recent workforce readiness awards include $6,097 to Edison State Community College to update equipment in its Advanced Engineering & Manufacturing Lab; $8,829 to the MCESC to underwrite a student assessment tool and $25,000 to Edison State to update nursing school facilities.

With one program already in the books (the Town Hall’s first airing on the local PBS station was Oct. 15), the focus now is on completing the series.

Our goal is to produce four Brick by Brick Town Halls over the course of the season, with two originating from ThinkTV in Dayton and two from CET in Cincinnati,” according to Veal. “Each town hall takes a deeper look at an issue that has a real impact on people throughout Southwest Ohio.

“We started with workforce readiness because whether you’re a student thinking about your future, an employer looking for skilled workers, or someone considering a career change, it touches all of us. Our next town hall will originate from Cincinnati and focus on housing affordability, which is another issue affecting communities across our region.”

The productions are substantial, Veal indicated.

“We tape them in front of a studio audience, bring together experts and community voices, and then turn those conversations into a television broadcast,” he said. “It really is an all-hands-on-deck effort, with our production crews and staff across the organization helping bring these programs to life.”

Each program includes professionally produced field segments highlighting workforce development initiatives, career pathways and regional employment opportunities. In completed form, all programs will be distributed through ThinkTV/PBS broadcast and digital platforms.

“More than a discussion about employment, this Town Hall examines the interconnected systems that help individuals build meaningful careers and businesses thrive,” said Veal. “Through informed dialogue and personal storytelling, we move beyond statistics and headlines to explore the human impact of workforce development and its vital role in shaping the long-term prosperity of our region.”

The Town Hall series is not something new to the realm of PBS.

“Community engagement has always been part of the DNA of public media,” Veal said. “So, bringing people together for conversations like these isn’t necessarily new for ThinkTV.”

Veal said he is appreciative of the partnership that has been forged between his organization and the Foundation.

“We are incredibly grateful to the Tipp City Foundation for being an early supporter of this new series,” he said. “Their support is a wonderful example of what community partnership looks like.”