Vibrant
You are Vibrant Communities of Elkhart County!
Our vibrancy is powered by you and your ideas. We listen to you, organize your ideas, and empower you and your friends and neighbors by connecting your ideas with Elkhart County leaders and organizations to inspire change and growth in our community.
Vibrant Communities of Elkhart County is not an organization. We don’t have a brick-and-mortar building or a physical address. Vibrant Communities is a movement of people just like you doing good in our county. It is a group of volunteers gathering and sharing data and a neighbor cleaning up a park. It is Mim Hartman and Indiana’s largest apple pie at Nappanee’s Apple Festival. Vibrant Communities is Mikel Ropp at the Bristol Community Garden. It is Rick Newbill with the Southdale Bridge Builders. Vibrant Communities is everywhere in Elkhart County. It is each of us.
Vibrant Communities, with your assistance and feedback, taps into the unstoppable energy of the Elkhart County community to encourage, collect, and share ideas to make our part of the world an even better place to live, work, play, visit, and invest.
Driven by a community-wide network of entities, partners, residents, and dedicated volunteers, we provide this online, community platform to represent YOUR wants, needs, hopes, and voices, and to help bring YOUR ideas to life.
For us, success lies in our ability to create community conversations and inspire participation, action, and progress throughout our communities. Because when we work together, there is nothing more powerful or more fun than the ingenuity and creativity of Elkhart County.
In short, YOU are Vibrant Communities!
As a community of creators – we are known for our authenticity, energy and pride.
Our Core Beliefs
Engage
Your involvement leads to growth and progress for everyone!
We champion YOUR ideas in order to engage residents, businesses, and community leaders in community conversations and actions. Your engagement can transform Elkhart County into an even better place to live, work, and play.
To see an example of how we put this core belief to work, read our story about the unstoppable Frank Ramirez—whose inspired volunteer work at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Elkhart County is engaging the community through mentoring and helping to impact more than 1,5000 youths a year!
Advocate
Creativity and collaboration are keys to advocating for a better Elkhart County
We work to inspire YOU to contribute your time and energy to Elkhart County causes you are passionate about. Advocating for good causes and good people, in order to promote increased volunteerism and participation, is something we are passionate about!
To see this core belief in action, read our feature story about Goshen’s Yolo López DeMarco and her efforts to bring the annual Latino Business Expo to life.
Celebrate
Successful places celebrate good ideas, good programs,
and good people
Elkhart County is a community of makers known for being innovative, collaborative, and authentic in making contributions to the world. We celebrate the people and projects that impact our future growth, prosperity, and quality of place!
To witness this core belief in play, read our story about Elkhart’s Robert Taylor. Robert’s crucial work as the President of the Indiana Black Expo-Elkhart Chapter, which helped him earn the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Trailblazer Award in 2023, changes lives for the better and inspires Elkhart’s youth.
Vibrant Communities Timeline
2015
A Movement is Born
The Elkhart County Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Community Foundation of Elkhart County teamed up to address quality-of-place projects. More than 30 community leaders from around Elkhart County joined the initial conversation!
2016
Kick-Off Event
Urban development expert and noted author Peter Kageyama spoke to nearly 600 residents at the Vibrant Communities Kick-off Event. The event ignited five months of intensive, community dialogue that led to a 77-item Action Agenda of priority projects and programs to improve Elkhart County.
2017
Little BIG Idea Grants
We supplied the funds. You supplied the fun ideas! The launch of the Little Big Idea Grant program embraced the notion that your ideas can have a big, positive impact. Applications for micro-grants up to $1,000 allowed people of all ages to submit fun and quirky project ideas, and over two years, 59 projects were awarded a total of $55,000.
2018
365 Vibrant People
Vibrant Communities firmly established its social media presence with a campaign to recognize the most energetic, cheerful, and generous residents of Elkhart County. The successful campaign featured community members who went the extra mile in helping the community–people just like you.
2019
Report to the Community
Vibrant Communities conducted an audit and compiled a community report on the progress of the 2016 Action Agenda report and its achievements. Thanks to your work, more than 50 items from the original report were either completed or underway by 2019.
2020
The Big Event
The Big Event—a celebration of our communities, our people, our work, and our current and future initiatives—announced Elkhart County’s new destination brand identity: Well Crafted. The Well Crafted destination brand represents community pride and helps connect Elkhart County’s rich heritage in manufacturing with present-day makers and residents.
2021
Vibrant Neighborhoods
Neighborhood microgrants were launched to foster a spirit of community kinship and neighborliness. Over a two-year period, 51 grants totaling $25,000 were awarded. The second resident sentiment survey collected feedback from 600 individuals with consistent positive results.
2022
The Next Chapter
The theory of constant change dictated that, five years into our mission, we reaffirmed the need to continue gathering community feedback toward new, far-reaching priorities. With hundreds of residents involved, the process took a year to complete and provided the groundwork for Action Agenda 2.0—the next iteration of our comprehensive community report.
2023
Year of the Volunteer
Understanding that people like you make Elkhart County so special, we launched the Year of the Volunteer in the spring of 2023. Over the course of 12 months, that campaign celebrated volunteers and shared personal stories that inspired many more to give and engage in our communities.
2024
ACTION AGENDA 2.0
We released the comprehensive Action Agenda 2.0 report, followed by a series of community discussions, guest speakers, and stories celebrating your work in the community. Communities took action with updated Action Agenda 2.0 initiatives, and Vibrant Communities updated its brand and web presence with a more vibrant look to celebrate Elkhart County!
A look at some of the Action Agenda projects completed since 2016
Voices like yours, joined by so many community members, expressed the desire to renovate the Goshen Theater, a 115-year old heritage building with a rich history. In 2020 the facility reopened its doors after completing a $5 million dollar face-lift. The building now includes beautiful and upgraded spaces and holds many community events, performances, and concerts, and provides an extensive education department for people of all ages in the community.
In 2019, you spoke and Vibrant Communities listened. The Elkhart Health and Aquatics Center opened as one of the largest natatoriums in the county. Located in the heart of the Elkhart River District, this $70 million effort resulted from a collaboration between public and private partnerships, and—bolstered by input from folks like you—was the largest project completed from the original Vibrant Communities Action Agenda.
Over the past five years, Vibrant Communities has received an enormous amount of feedback from residents just like you supporting upgrades to our parks and trails. Projects like the River Run Trail in Middlebury and completed stages of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail have been fueled by your support, and future plans are underway for additional trail development connecting more neighborhoods in Elkhart County.
The Little BIG Idea Grant is a micro-grant program that inspires residents like you to bring your big ideas to life! Grant applicants submit fun, creative ideas for projects, events, and community initiatives promoting love, unity, and the arts. More than 80 projects have been awarded grants since 2017, including the annual pumpkin race in Downtown Middlebury, artist murals, and an initiative to spread positive messages at Concord High School.
Your support and feedback helped the WaNee Vision campaign result in an unprecedented public/private partnership. Nearly $6 million was raised for programs and initiatives to support great organizations across our county, including the Boys & Girls Club, Family Christian Development Center, Elder Haus, and Wellfield Park soccer fields.
Thanks to your ideas and input, various community grants have created and supported initiatives such as Vibrant Neighborhoods—which offers education, resources, and micro-grants of $500. These grants help community members spend more time with their neighbors and support neighborhood clean-up days, barbecues, and concerts. Your neighborhood is important to us!
