Thank you for your coverage of the 34th Annual Southwest Economic Outlook forum at Fort Lewis College (Herald, Jan. 7). Your report identifies a critical challenge for our community: the widening gap between local wages and the cost of living, which often forces our graduates to look elsewhere for a livable wage.
To address this, I strongly encourage local businesses and nonprofits to proactively source interns from FLC. Establishing these early connections helps bridge the transition from student to professional, securing a pipeline of young talent that might otherwise leave Durango while ensuring they step into roles that pay a living wage.
Shanta Village Partners recently experienced the immense value of this approach firsthand. Through our ongoing collaboration with the FLC Village Aid Project on international infrastructure projects – including water systems, bridges and schools in impoverished regions – we met an exceptional student named Aubrey Peterson. Aubrey will graduate from FLC with an engineering degree this May and, thanks to the foundation laid by FLC’s emphasis on service and internships, she will immediately begin her career as our Assistant Global Program Manager.
We are proud to welcome her to Shanta, where we are pioneering a holistic, community-led model that equips local people to solve local problems permanently, fostering independence and sustainable change in remote villages. By investing in FLC interns today, our local organizations can build a more resilient economy and provide a future for the next generation of Durango’s workforce.
Wade Griffith, Executive Director, Shanta Village Partners
Durango
