A team of faculty, staff and students from West Virginia University will visit Sistersville, W.Va., Nov. 7-10 to help citizens plan for the future.

The Community Design Team (CDT), a group of WVU volunteers from a range of disciplines, will meet with community representatives to help assess the towns strengths and needs and to begin developing a set of designs that reflect the issues articulated by the community.

“Helping people make the most of their community is the goal of the CDT ,”said Jeremy Morris, program assistant for the project, which operates out of the Division of Resource Management in WVU s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences.

“Teams might include landscape architects, planners, geographers, architects, engineers, historians and economic development experts,”Morris added.”The mix depends on the needs of the locality and other factors.”

Joining the CDT on the Sistersville visit will be the Jui Valley Community Design Team of Romania.

“This is a project the WVU Extension Service is helping to organize and support,”Morris said.”The Jui Valley is very much like West Virginia in its economics, landscape and people. The Jui Valley team hopes to use the CDT model to engage communities in the valley to become more active in community projects.”

Representatives of the Tyler County Commission, Development Authority and Sistersville General Hospital approached the CDT and began the application process that led to the November visit. In their application, they cited heritage tourism, recruitment of high-tech business and increased community involvement in developing efforts as key opportunities for the community. The CDT will be asked to offer input on these and a range of other issues, including downtown beautification and infrastructure improvement.

Created as part of WVU Extensions Center for Community, Economic and Workforce Development, the CDT has visited close to 20 West Virginia communities in the past three years.