It’s graduation week. By Sunday night there will no longer be any high school seniors….they will be graduates of the high school they have attended for the past year. And they will be looking forward to their future.

It’s a future that needs them desperately to step into some important roles. In every community, in every school district, our children learn how to be students, to lead in their classrooms and activities, on the sports fields and organizations that they find of interest.

We want them to also lead in their communities after high school.

When a student graduates, it doesn’t take long to realize there is still a lot to learn in the world. There will be mistakes, there will be failures, there will be heartbreak.

It can feel overwhelming.

When that first thought hits, it is important that family members, friends, peers, employers be there to help guide through those early efforts.

Because no one is truly alone, but finding a place in the world is not easy.

As I look back into the pages of time each day, I read about the great leaders who have helped grow our community, not just in Webster City, but all over Hamilton County and Iowa. We have had a hand in graduating some extremely successful people, some who have stayed in the area, but many who have moved away.

And I know why.

We don’t set our youth on a path to help keep a community healthy. We don’t explain how the town was built by people working together, not for a paycheck, but for a way of life. We don’t talk about how a full day of work was from sun-up to sun-down, and then it was time to study or handle the bills or the business.

That is how a community was built.

We set our youth on a path of success, but we don’t tell them that this can happen here.

Success isn’t where you live, how much money you make or how much you have; it’s happiness, and being content. It’s loving the people and the place.

And those people will help.

People who know how to organize, motivate and direct action are more valuable in small towns in Iowa than anywhere else.

Because here, there are fewer people to compete with, fewer people stepping onto the city and county boards, school boards and councils, building a leadership network through volunteer work.

These are the important roles that make a difference in how our lives evolve. That is the key, there are more chances to make a difference here.

We all have a job to make the community we live in be just what we want it to be.

If what you want isn’t here, let’s put it here.

Small towns are great places to start; if you want to start a new business, we are hungry for them.

If you don’t see the job you want, start the job you want. If you don’t see the business here you need, start the business you need, or find a friend and together start that business that is missing from our community.

What used to divide us was the need for better Internet services, but today, we have that. We have built a great infrastructure to handle our electrical needs. We have homes and houses that are still affordable.

Sometimes it takes a little elbow grease. But since the beginning of time work has existed so we can exist; you worked to build a shelter, you worked to find food. In some places in the world, this still happens.

We can travel the world, but we can’t all live in the perfect place. Because once everyone else finds that perfect place, it no longer is perfect.

So why not make that perfect place here?

Where there are beautiful parks, and wonderful neighbors. Where there are family members and friends who can help when you are down, and celebrate you when you are up.

We don’t want to send our youth away, we want to keep them close, where we can celebrate them, and encourage them, and trust them to take care of us.

It takes good leadership to make a community healthy. It takes younger people to step in the roles of their parents and grandparents. It takes a succession plan to know how a business can change ownership; so a community can continue when there are challenges, disasters and catastrophes.

When there is heartbreak.

This community celebrates its youth, helping them step along into their future, through coaching, teaching, organizing activities, supporting fundraisers for activities and events.

Here those same young people can become the coaches and teachers, they can help build the activities and support the events. They can own the businesses and the buildings and homes that they dreamed of.

We want Webster City and Hamilton County to be such a great place, that everyone wants to be here. And a great place to come back to when the journey is done and the time is right.

Especially our youth.

Kolleen Taylor is the Community Editor for the Daily Freeman Journal.