By Tim Leeds/Havre Daily News/tleeds@havredailynews.com
The Havre entry on the Come Home Montana Web site is being featured this week on the Montana Associated Technology Roundtable Web site, founded to promote economic development in Montana by bringing together entrepreneurs and business professionals via the Internet.
The Havre entry, put together by Havre Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Debbie Vandenberg and Craig Erickson of Bear Paw Development Corp., is intended to encourage people who have left the state to move back to Havre.
"If we can bring back one or two people, it's a success," Erickson said.
The Come Home Montana site allows communities to list, free of charge, information about their assets and career opportunities.
The site grew out of an idea hatched at meetings held in March 2003 in Liberty County to gather information for a community assessment report, sponsored by the Montana Economic Developers Association.
Julie Foster, a member of the team writing the report, said so many people said they wanted their children to return to Montana that she thought a Web site telling people about communities in the state was a possible answer. She started the site in October 2003.
The Montana Associated Technology Roundtable site has a link to a featured community each week.
Erickson said the Havre entry will be updated periodically.
"It's certainly not a finished project," he said.
He plans to look at the entry after the first of the year to see if anything needs to be changed, and said people who have suggestions about the entry can contact him or Vandenberg.
On the Net: Come Home Montana: www.comehomemontana.org
Montana Associated Technologies Roundtable: www.matr.net/
