Farmville hopes to get a makeover for its downtown area in the near future and it’s looking to community members for suggestions.
Farmville will be hosting the SOUP proposal event from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 1, at the Longwood Center for Visual Arts (LCVA). With the payment of $5, people will get to hear proposals regarding ideas to better improve Downtown Farmville and be provided a soup dinner while the voting on proposals for projects takes place.
These proposals can be any project thought up from scratch that one would like to take part in, in which said project will benefit and improve the town of Farmville. The application can be found and submitted on the official SOUP event website (farmvilledowntown.com/soup). If one’s proposal makes it to the final vote and is selected on the night of the event, then that proposal will receive a minimum grant of $1,000 for the proposed project they wish to pursue. Not only are the citizens in the community strongly encouraged to take part in this event but Longwood students and organizations are more than welcome to pursue a role in the SOUP event as well. Any idea is welcome to help improve downtown Farmville.
The idea for the SOUP proposal began when “four people gathered around and came up with ideas on how to get involved with the Farmville community,” said Hosterman.
One person from the group recalled some well received events in which one pays a certain amount of money to vote on a soup then that soup would be featured in a community pot-luck dinner. The four then amended that idea and then came up with the SOUP proposal.
“Putting a hometown personality spin on it” stated Alec Hosterman, who is mostly on the public relations side of this proposal as well as chairing up the committee who will select winners of the grants. The committee will be a panel of four people from the community who will select the winners of the proposal.
“It really is a committee made up of people from the area,” stated Hosterman.
The organizers of this event encourage Longwood students in particular to take part in this event because it can be a good way to learn “citizen leadership in connection with the town of Farmville,” stated Hosterman.
Proposing ideas would also be a good opportunity for “…students to take an idea and begin that project from scratch and they could see that idea implemented in the town in which students will also graduate from Longwood with an even larger lasting impact by being able to come back in a year or two and being able to say, I completed that project which benefitted not only Longwood, but the town of Farmville,” stated Hosterman.
Some things the committee takes into consideration when selecting the finalists are how the particular group is going to use those funds to help carry out the project they would like to pursue, as well as the time frame in which the project can be completed. The guidelines for the proposals are included in the application.
The predictions of which kind of proposals will be presented are still a mystery however.
“It will be nice to be able to have some of the proposals completed fairly quickly seeing the debate is coming in to town and the national media will be at Farmville’s doorstep,” Hosterman said.
If you would like to make a proposal, the deadline for applications will be on March 21.
