“In 2009, my wife and I built a cabin in Glouster, near Burr Oak State Park, while I was working for a company in Columbus. We’ve had friends down here for years, so we saw and heard about the decline caused by the departure of the coal industry. After another company I worked for sold, I had the opportunity to take a year off, and about 10 days into that I said, ‘Why don’t we try to do something to help Glouster?’
The idea was to create skill-building opportunities that could increase someone’s skillset, grow them into a leader, or give them IT skills. I thought it would be great to not just bring jobs, but jobs that had room for advancement.
I brought a developer down and did all kinds of stuff to pursue that idea…and fell flat on my face.
But along the way, I got to know the folks in this town. I saw their resilience and scrappiness. There’s Sam Jones, who’s run a boxing gym in Glouster for decades and trains kids for free. I got to know Rudy—92 years old and the essence of a ‘dirty girl’: she worked as a heavy equipment operator and is just an all-around badass.
There were these personalities in this community that really longed for bringing Glouster back to what it was during coal’s heyday, so I decided, ‘Let’s work on the community first.’
Dirty Girl Coffee was inspired by people like Rudy. We use the tagline ‘Get dirty. Be dirty. Live dirty.’ to celebrate women who get dirty every day, whether they’re an accountant, a construction worker, if they’re building roads, loading airplanes, or running a yarn shop. We want to celebrate the fact that women get shit done. We just love that—and we like to have a little fun with it, too.
There have been a host of studies globally demonstrating that when you empower women economically, it enhances communities, so we work on projects that kind of facilitate women’s economic progress.
We roasted in our cabin initially, and the expansion project that OhioSE funded helped us because we couldn’t really grow. We couldn’t accept new clients because we were in too small of a space, so we bought a building, renovated it, and put on a small addition. We are now at our expansion facility, so we can actually grow, do big things and hire people, which is really important.
If you go into Athens, a lot of kids that grew up in that area are shoved into the service industry. If you can’t afford to go to college and you don’t want to go into the military, jobs are few. We are trying to find the best way to create different pathways for folks. Entrepreneurship is one, skill-building opportunities for remote jobs is another, and we work on projects to support those kinds of initiatives.
Our other tagline is, ‘When women thrive, communities thrive.’ There have been a host of studies globally demonstrating that when you empower women economically, it enhances communities, so we work on projects that kind of facilitate women’s economic progress.
Coffee also brings people together and is a great way to spur conversation. We got to know a ton of people, hear their stories, and just kind of listen for a while. At the time, we were trying to have a voice and understand the challenges, so that was really beneficial for us in creating a strategy to make change. One of the things we heard was people wanted more community events, so Dirty Girl Coffee started an event called Glouster First Fridays, where we bring in live music and food trucks. That was a great opportunity to gather people together and listen to people.
Glouster has a pizza place and an Eagles club, a Moose club and a couple of small businesses, but no coffee shops before this. There were no non-alcohol-focused places to gather and for people to hang out, and one of the things we heard from high school kids was that they just wanted a place where they could get an after-school job or hang out. We were really focused on just being a wholesaler e-commerce business, and while that’s still the majority of our income, we do have a very small coffee shop storefront to help fill that need in the community.
I call it our love letter to Glouster, because we wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“I’m also the board president for the Glouster Revitalization Organization. Like many communities, one of our early observations was that organizations tend to work in silos—not working together and collaborating, and often fighting each other. We wanted to create an environment of collaboration, and Glouster Revitalization Organization is a great way to do that.
We’re very intentional about our board. We have the economic development director for Athens County on our board. We also have the county clerk, someone from legal services that really understands the challenges of folks just trying to hold on to housing. We also have someone from HAPCAP who is in charge of transportation: if you live in Glouster but don’t have a car, transportation is tough. We’re really intentional about that and all those folks live in or near the community, so it’s important that we have that collaboration.
We also purchased a 9,000 square foot, three-story Knights of Pythias building and were awarded $1.8 million through the Appalachian Community Grant Fund to create a food-based entrepreneurial space on the first floor, a co-working and remote worker space on the second floor, and the third floor has this fantastic ballroom that will make a great event space.
It’s the most exciting time, and in two years, Glouster is going to feel very different. We hope to create a model that can spread to other communities like Glouster.
That’s an exciting project and stuff is starting to happen. It’s the most exciting time, and in two years, Glouster is going to feel very different. We hope to create a model that can spread to other communities like Glouster.
The building is just the cornerstone project to create what we’re hoping will generate about $1.6 million of annual payroll revenue out of that project. SAOP is also renovating a building across the street for a new marketplace with additional offices and building housing units up on the Catholic church lot as part of this Appalachian Community Grant Award.
It’s that spirit of collaboration and all these nonprofits just met recently with the mayor of Glouster, who’s amazing. She is part of another grant program and they’re putting a ton of money into the park. We were also awarded some dollars that will create the ability for us to have some gap funding. As we’ve pursued funds for the project, building construction costs have continued to rise, so that gap funding will make sure we get everything built out.
We see a lot of towns where outside investment comes in to try and determine the future of a town. I call it ‘swoop and poop.’ But we like the idea of people here in Glouster creating their own path forward and giving the ingredients to let that happen.
It’s a really exciting time and in two years, Glouster is going to look a lot different physically. Our plan is to take people that live in this village and give them an economic boost through job creation, bring remote jobs in, and create an environment to move forward through what the residents of this town determine the path right is.”
—Jane Cavarozzi, Dirty Girl Coffee and the Glouster Revitalization Organization
Glouster, Athens County
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