The Board of Directors of the Lakeland Area Chamber Foundation recently announced that it has awarded a grant to Lakeland Vision, the community’s visioning organization. The grant will assist the organization in creating a community-based Web site, ConnectLakeland.com, an on-line portal for residents, visitors, business and governmental organizations to keep each other informed of community initiatives and events.
With plans to launch the first phase of the site in early 2011, a team of community volunteers have been moving forward with a design that will provide a single community calendar that incorporates events posted on well-established Web sites, as well as an option for organizations to post directly to the ConnectLakeland.com calendar. “The community has repeatedly called for a single location to get information about what’s going on in Lakeland on a given day. We’re designing ConnectLakeland.com to collect information that’s already available, while also giving users a single venue to distribute information about their organization’s event,” says Chuck Welch, Lakeland Vision volunteer and chair of the ConnectLakeland Task Force. Welch continues, “Having the support of Lakeland Area Chamber Foundation reinforces our belief that we are creating a valuable product for the Lakeland community.”
In announcing the grant, Foundation Chairman Anu Saxena (KCI Technologies, Inc.) stated that “the ConnectLakeland project is directly aligned with the Chamber’s strategic plan to increase awareness of Lakeland’s rich quality of life and diversity of arts, cultural and recreational activities. We commend Lakeland Vision for taking on this important project and look forward to working with them to launch the site in 2011.”