In 2022, Thrive Allen County is celebrating a big milestone: our fifteenth anniversary! It’s hard to believe we’ve been working in our community for this long, and it’s been an honor to serve Allen County for the last decade and a half. Now is also a fitting time to take a look at the moment we were founded. Will you join us for a quick step back in time?

Though it seems like just yesterday to some of us, 2007 was a different world in so many ways. President George W. Bush was nearing the end of his time in office, having been elected to a second term in 2004. Early in the year on January 9, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to a Macworld keynote audience in San Francisco. One of the first smartphones to hit the market, it became available to US customers later that year in June. Facebook was the hot new platform, having just opened to anyone with an email address in September of 2006. American Idol topped the television ratings (Jordin Sparks was crowned the winner of Season 6), and the hottest song of the year was Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” (to the left, to the left…).

Iola police office Kelly Klubeck rides in a motorboat along South State Street on July 1, 2007. Iola lost 120 homes to the 2007 flood and hundreds were displaced. –Iola Register

Here in Kansas, Governor Kathleen Sebelius was starting her second term in office, having been re-elected in 2006. She would later be tapped by the Obama administration in 2009 to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Extreme weather events struck the state over the summer. In May, a tornado leveled 95% of the Southwest Kansas town of Greensburg. And here in Allen County, floods overwhelmed the south side of Iola, destroying 120 homes.

The massive floods were the latest in a series of challenges facing Allen County. The familiar refrains of economic downturn, population loss, and poor health were taking their toll on our community. In July 2005, a group of community members had begun to identify ongoing issues facing our community. They would eventually become the Allen County Health Advisory Committee. In a survey conducted in March 2006, county residents voiced their concerns for the state of our community: drug and alcohol abuse, lack of dental care, families unable to afford health insurance, and a host of other problems.

Thrive volunteers talk with a visitor at an exposition booth in 2007.

In 2007, the future of our community looked grim. Facing perennial poverty, poor health, and the a large part of our county seat in ruins, our county could have given up. We could have accepted a fate of decline. Instead, our community chose to move forward. We chose to thrive.

Over the coming months, we will be taking a look back at the early years of Thrive Allen County and the progress that our community has made since then. This isn’t just a celebration of our own milestones—it is a reflection on the hard work of many individuals and groups. It’s been our honor to participate in the growth of Allen County as a convener, cheerleader, and changemaker. We hope you’ll follow along with this retrospective. Thank you for making our first fifteen years possible, and here’s to many more!