Members of the Panther Valley’s Blueprint Communities team want input from the community, as the group embarks on a 10-year journey working to revitalize the region.

They group also wants to get the word out about what the Blueprint Community designation could mean to future of the four boroughs that comprise the Panther Valley School District, said Joe Guardiani, one of the core team members.

Team members will have a tent at the Summit Hill Hootenanny Music Festival on Sunday and Guardiani encouraged people to stop by and say, “Hello.”

“We’d like people to share their pleasures and pains of living in the Panther Valley, and what we need to do,” he said.

Core team members began an 18-month training program through the Pennsylvania Downtown Center that will give them the tools to prepare a revitalization plan for the Panther Valley.

The program, which was started by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh in 2005 to breathe new life into communities in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, will also connect them with the resources to make that plan a reality.

The Panther Valley was the first regional group designated and one of only 10 teams in eastern Pennsylvania selected. Communities in this area are only selected every 15 to 18 years.

“We were lucky enough to be chosen,” Abbie Guardiani told Panther Valley School Board members last month. “Blueprint Communities have had a great record of success.

“We don’t have to look any further than Tamaqua to see what that designation has done for that town,” she said.

Joe Guardiani pointed out that they’re really in the infancy of the program, and are just beginning to look at the Panther Valley’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and external threats as they set goals.

Tackling blight was an issue that brought members together as a shared problem in the four boroughs and how the group came together with the assistance of Sen. David Argall’s office to seek the Blueprint Communities designation, he said.

Among some of the goals members see emerging are the need for affordable housing, developing tourism, conquering blight in neighborhoods and improving the spirit of the community, Joe Guardiani said.

The group wants to give Panther Valley a sense of hope and serve as source of inspiration that things can and will be better in the years to come, he said, taking from his wife’s words to Panther Valley school directors.

“Your fight for equitable funding for our kids gives us hope,” Abbie Guardiani said last month. “Hope is contagious. You can either live the way people live, and say ‘It’s never going to happen. You’re never going to make a difference.’

“Or you can have hope,” she said. “And this board has hope. You have hope Superintendent McAndrew.”

That hope is what spurred on the core group to move forward and seek the designation, she said.

The group now wants to build on the hope, set goals and formulate a plan for the Panther Valley’s future, listening to community members and bringing on additional partners to achieve goals as they move forward, Joe Guardiani said.