"Individuals committed to the community, community committed to the individual."

Committed to building stronger communities.

We're a group of small town kids from Southern Illinois. We believe the key to building stronger rural communities is bringing together people both in and from their hometowns to create educational opportunity, strong local economies, and civic empowerment. 

We're starting right in our own hometowns and the school district we grew up in. We are uniting  current and former residents from the Egyptian School district's seven villages: Tamms, Olive Branch, Sandusky, Elco, Unity, Hodges Park and Thebes. Whether we're back home or have moved away, we all still consider our community home and we want to see it thrive. 

At our core, we simply believe in taking care of each other: individuals committed to the community, community committed to the individual.  

It's a movement.

We like to think of Hometown Connect as a movement starting in our hometowns. Just like we believe that our hometowns are stronger when we work together, we also believe creating a network of small towns like ours across the country will make us even stronger.  The progress we seek won't be easy, but together we know it's possible.