Nebraska foundation plan seeks to plant seeds to reverse 'brain drain.'

There's a factor driving the "brain drain," in Nebraska and the Midlands, that no tax incentive or government program can fully overcome.

It's an attitude that sometimes comes over young people neraing adulthood, especially if they grew up mostly in one place. It goes like this:

"This is the most boring place. There's nothing to do. Once I'm out of school, I'll go where there's more excitement and never come back."

That's an alarming sentiment to some in Nebraska who worry about the sustainability of their communities. It's no less alarming in Omaha and Lincoln, because young people there say it, too, looking toward larger metropoises as the exciting "big city."

Grass-is-always-greener thinking can hurt much more in a small town, however. It can mean the loss of future workers, parents and children who cannot be easily replaced. It makes survivial much harder. Need that loss be forever?

The Nebraska Community Foundation has an answer. As World-Herald reporter David Hendee outlined this month, the foundation has developed a strategy; "Home Town Competitiveness," to plant an idea with young Nebraskans:

You can make a life back home. It's not impossible. And if you go off to see the world, remember: This is a place worth coming home to.

The strategy is the second phase of the foundation's campaign, which has been urging Nebraskans to bequeath a share of their assets to their hometowns.

The second phase won't be as effective without the first. For it takes money - locally supplied, sometimes supplemented by government funds and advice - to enable small towns to preserve that intangible thing called "The Good Life" for whoever may be looking for it.

They may come from anywhere. The Computer Age makes it more practical, especially in some service and information industries.

With the Internet, modern communications and convenient access to highways and airports, some people weary of the big city's pace and high costs can keep their job while living somewhere slower adn more affordable. Or an unemployed person in rural or small-town Nebraska might find work with a big-city company without having to move.

Some of Nebraska's small towns have benefited from this opportunity for a decade or more. And some of the "newcomers" are, in a sense, actually old neighbors - people who grew up in the town or somewhere else in Nebraska, left for years or even decades, but tired of life in the fast lane.

Maybe some Nebraskans manage to implant that emotional homing beacon in their children who leave. But the more we work at it, the better the chance they might someday come home.

The experiences and ideas they bring back with them can be useful. We should listen to them and embrace what works. But if young people leave home with no appreciation for what was good in their town, a New York City or a Los Angeles may capture them permanently.

Let's sell Nebraska's children, as they grow up, on the state and its towns. Let them know what makes Nebraska special - brilliant sunsets, sandhill cranes, pioneer heritage, openness in government, the Husker sporting tradition, etc.

Above all, make sure they know how they can make a living and a life here if they do come back. Nebraskans' natural frugality ought not stop them from making it possible.

The Nebraska Community Foundation already can point to parts of the state where young people are hearing the message. If others from Harrison to Falls City join in, they might not only slow the brain drain but perhaps, over time reverse it.

Source: November 28, 2004 in the Sunday (Omaha) World Herald.