WHITMIRE — Chris Willingham, member of the John Maxwell Team and a Whitmire local, spoke before Whitmire Town Council about a new leadership initiative in the works.
John Maxwell, according to Willingham, is the foremost authority of leadership in the world — Maxwell has written over 100 books on the subject.
Willingham added that after meeting with Whitmire Community School Principal Allison Stribble, there is a 99.9 percent chance that Whitmire Community School will be the first, at least in the state of South Carolina — if not the southeast, a John Maxwell certified leadership school.
“With the school, obviously we’ll do assemblies — go in every nine weeks or even a more frequent basis with the kids training them on leadership. We’ll also be involved in the Future Leaders of America Club they have at the school and give them more in-depth training on leadership,” he said.
By going into the school and reaching out to the students, Willingham said this will provide them with tools and in some ways a leg up on their peers.
“By the time they graduate high school, the amount of information that they’re going to be fed over the course of two, three, up to 10 years, is going to be beyond anything that their peers could have access to,” he said.
Every year, the John Maxwell Group holds what is called the Global Youth Initiative. The Global Youth Initiative started in 2017 and the goal by 2018 was to reach one million children across the globe — which ranges anywhere from Africa, the Middle East, China and the United States.
“In 2020, Whitmire will host, keep your fingers crossed, the very first Global Youth Initiative in the state of South Carolina. Whitmire will host the entire county — this is going to be where I’m focused,” Willingham said. “Instead of Newberry inviting Whitmire to Newberry for events, Whitmire is going to say ‘come on Newberry, Prosperity, all you guys come to us’ because we’re going to take the lead in leadership — that’s really the goal in 2020, to establish Whitmire as kind of a leadership hub.”
Last year, Willingham said it was all about laying the foundation — they have partnered with Piedmont Technical College, the Newberry Downtown Development Association, the Newberry County Chamber of Commerce and they have already started holding monthly Lunch-N-Learns in Newberry at Piedmont Tech.
Leadership training will also be available for faculty at Whitmire Community School.
“Principal Stribble is going to provide all of the teachers the opportunity, whether they call in volunteers from the community to take lunch duty while the teachers are allowed to come in and do a Lunch-N-Learn or I come in and I pour into them. Since they’re spending all of their time pouring into our students,” Willingham said.
Willingham added that it is hard to get people on board, but it all has to do with where the town was, versus where they would like to see it be moving forward.
One of the first questions Stribble asked Willingham was how much this endeavor would cost.
“How about zero? I’m not a fan of red tape — I’m a huge fan of action. I’m eating, I have a roof over my head, I have the lights on and I have something to share. I have something of value I can offer a community that has been struggling for a while,” Willingham said. “I feel led to offer whatever resources I have available to me to help the place I now call home.”
There is a catch — it requires the participation of the community.
“It doesn’t work if you don’t participate. This is just a preliminary introduction to what we’re offering and then we’ll get together and kind of discuss where we’ll go from there,” he said.
In other business, the Town of Whitmire briefly discussed the 2018-19 Audit. The audit received a clean opinion with no findings.
Mayor Billy Hollingsworth said the town lost a total of $60,142, which means the town overspent the budgeted amount. On the water side, the total operating income was $260,837, while depreciation came in at $270,227.
During the discussion, Hollingsworth said they will need to find a new auditor, due to the town’s current auditor retiring. A motion was made by Councilman Michael Thomas and seconded by Debbie Harris to allow Hollingsworth to move forward in speaking with auditor David McAllister, out of Greenwood (Manley Garvin), as Whitmire’s potential auditor.
Other business:
• The Town of Whitmire had a beginning balance of $10,900.94, deposits $90,944.81 and expenditures of $83,952.03, for an ending balance of $17,893.72. On the public works side, the town had a beginning balance of $90,055.49, revenue $69,872.29 and expenditures of $68,116.75 for an ending balance of $91,811.03.
• Whitmire Police Chief Jeremiah Sinclair reported the department filed 71 incidents for the month of December and issued 50 citations for the month. Some of the department’s calls included: larceny, burglary, counterfeit money, transfer alcohol to person under 21, possession with intent to distribute meth, possession of marijuana, leaving the scene of an accident and disorderly conduct. The department investigated two traffic collisions.