South Dakota

NDSU and SDSU Cooperative Extension will be holding a joint Study Circles organization and facilitation meeting in Aberdeen on September 8-9. The training will be the first official meeting for our Horizons III communities. (An announcement will be coming soon on who those 15 communities are!) National trainers from Everyday Democracy will be teaching community members how to recruit participants and organize their community Study Circles. Horizons III will be off to a running start this fall!

SDSU Extension is in the process of selecting up to 15 new communities to be part of the next round of Horizons. The communities will jump right into work this fall with an initial Study Circles training to occur in early September. Stay tuned for more news…

Celebrating 21 Horizons II Successes is a new publication from the SDSU Cooperative Extension Service. This 8 page tabloid highlights the many successes documented by the 21 communities across South Dakota that recently completed the Horizons II project.

To read more about the great things happening in South Dakota communities click here.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

The SDSU Community Innovation & Leadership staff and some Horizons community members met recently in Brookings to help map the future of community work for the Cooperative Extension Service. Here’s a photo of the group.

Back Row L to R: Joanne Haase, South District Extension Director/CIL Liaison; David Olson, Community Coordinator; Harvey Donnelly, Estelline Horizons; Mary Livingston, Whitewood Horizons; Kent Olson, Philip Horizons; Kari Fruechte, Horizons Project Director; Dan Oedekoven, Community Coordinator; Jannine Pahl, Marshall County Intern; Anthony Shaheen, Extension Educator - CIL; Connie Smith, Montrose Horizons.

Front Row L to R: Karla Trautman, SDSU Extension Specialist; Martha Landes, Community Coordinator; Cheryl Jacobs, Extension Educator - CIL & Community Coordinator; Karen Pearson, CES Associate Director; Darah Darrington, Extension Educator - CIL.

Thanks to Mary for sharing the photo and a big thanks to our Horizons community members who shared their time with us and gave us great input about their experiences and how we can work to better serve them in the future.

Here are some photos from Conde on their recent youth project day. One of their strategic goals was to provide family friendly activities for youth and adults. The day was also used as a day to provide postive youth mentoring opportunities. Lots of new skills learned and lots of fun!

First time Farmers Market

Wayne Hopkins of Arlington arranges plants and at his merchant table at the Estelline Farmers Market grand opening. (Photo by Joe O’Sullivan)

 By Joe O’Sullivan, Staff Writer

Published: Saturday, June 21, 2008 12:01 AM CDT

Gathered amongst a bonanza of produce, flowers, knickknacks and gourds, neighbors assembled Friday evening to celebrate and shop at the grand opening of the Estelline Farmers Market. The farmers market was held at Gazebo Park on the corner of Main Street and Route 28 from 4 to 7 p.m.

Eight vendors represented local farmers, artists and residents as tables were laden with alfalfa, tomatoes, eggs, odds-and-ends and even decorative gourds. Buyers and sellers alike munched on celebratory slices of cake and communed with friends. Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to take some time to highlight some of the recent stories from our communities across the state. There is so much to be learned from other communities and often communities have the same issues they are trying to find solutions to. You know the old saying, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel…here are some examples of great work happening in our Horizons communities:

Murdo: Their newly formed volunteer program is getting started. A great way to help those in your community who aren’t able to do tasks themselves. Keep building that social capital! Read more about it at http://murdo.communityblogs.us/2008/05/29/volunteer-program/  

Philip: Philip is looking at its assets, including the numerous things that all of their social organizations do in the community. An ice cream social will be used to highlight the work done by groups, to encourage new volunteers and to celebrate community spirit. Great idea Philip! Read more at: http://philip.communityblogs.us/2008/06/01/celebration-of-community-spirit/

Sanborn Central: A community wide rummage sale will be held, they got donations of bags from local grocery stores and donations of rummage sale items from the community. Proceeds of the sale go to help people in poverty in their community. Read more at: http://sanborncentral.communityblogs.us/2008/06/08/horizons-rummage-sale/

These are just a few of the great stories shared on the blog in the first part of June. We hope that communities will continue to blog after Horizons is officially done so we can see the great work you are doing in your communities continue.  

It’s been an amazing journey through Horizons II, and we are almost to the finish line! Communities are preparing for the June 30th official end to Horizons and the celebration events planned for late June and July.

Keep sharing your stories and progress on action items on the blogs. Your blog posts can help us tell your story to NWAF and help you earn the full $10,000 reward at the end.

Here’s a photo of the group that attended Northwest Area Foundation’s Grassroots and Groundwork conference in Minneapolis this past week. There were a total of 21 people from South Dakota Horizons who were either staff or community members.

We heard several keynote speakers and chose to attend a variety of break out sessions on poverty reduction and learned how other communities across the nation are doing things in their community. Thanks to Martha for making us take the photo (even though we all moaned and groaned about it) and thanks to Mary from Whitewood for remembering to bring her camera and sharing the photo with us.

I learn so much by attending our Horizons monthly meetings…for instance last night in Estelline I learned about Chicken Tractors, yes I said chicken tractors. One of the educational activites that Estelline has offered in their community is on the topic of Permaculture (permanent agriculture). One of the concepts they talked about using for their planned community garden was a chicken tractor.

It’s a simple, portable cage that you can move around the yard. The chickens eat the bugs and the weeds, and leave behind some “fertilizer.” Then you move them on to the next spot in the yard. Want to build your own chicken tractor? Click the link below for an example. I’m going to stick that little piece of information in my brain, just in case one day someone asks me, “do you know anything about chicken tractors, and I can say yep, I sure do!”

How to Build a Chicken Tractor

Horizons project staff will host three seminars about welcoming an aging population to communities. The seminars begin at 6:30 p.m. with a supper and continue with remarks from three speakers. To register call Debbie Bortnem, (605) 688-6191, before April 21. The seminar dates and locations are:

* April 23, Mitchell Technical Institute Technology Center, Room 111, Mitchell

* April 24, Whitewood Senior Citizens’ Center, Whitewood

* April 28, The Galley Restaurant, Webster

Click here for a copy of the flyer.

To all of our community bloggers, one way we have been trying to capture the changes and progess made in your community is by asking you and others in your community to answer questions in the 12 categories defined by NWAF. Just today I sent our main community contacts the final two questions.

If you are an Administrator, you can check to see how many posts you have per category in the Dashboard. Just go to Manage>Posts> and click the drop down menu under the “Category” heading as seen in the example below. This will help you to see if you have any categories that may need a little “beefing up”. Questions, let Cheryl know by leaving a comment here or send me an e-mail.

Tyndall will be holding a Policy Forum on the topic Poverty on Wednesday, April 16th. Click here for a poster with information on attending: policyforumtyndall.doc

The event is free and open to the public. Horizons community members can also have their travel to attend this event reimbursed.

Milan Wall from the Heartland Center for Leadership Development shared ideas with communities about Marketing Your Community. Milan did a whirlwind tour of South Dakota presenting in Armour, Kadoka and Conde. See the video below for a snippet of his presentation.

Mike and Trevor at the Rural Life Census Data Center at SDSU have been working on a new publication about community development. They have given us some statistics about the regional market size needed to suport local business development and retention.

Interesting reading and good information for your community as you make decisions about economic development.  Click the graphic to follow the link to the SDSU Coomunity Innovation & Leadership publications page.

Visit their website at http://sdrurallife.sdstate.edu/ for more information.

Not sure how many are aware of this site, so I thought I would pass it along…

It is a searchable database of grants available in our area, and nationwide. The database is managed by the South Dakota State Library. If your community is looking at finding grants, you can search by specific grants, fields of interest, keywords or specific grantor. Click the picture to follow the link to the website.

Estelline is the latest Blog of the Week! This prestigious award was given to the community of Estelline for giving their blogs a new jump start! We held a blog training on March 11th and had several new users get signed up. We have seen a lot more traffic and some new posts in the last week or two.

Thanks to technologically savvy Karl S. they have a shiny new header with images from Estelline and they added the minutes of their monthly meeting. New blogger Ron O. has also been putting in his 2 cents worth and Don G. shared some photos. Thanks for your renewed efforts and we hope to see lots more as you get some of your strategic plan projects started!

There was a great article in the Rapid City Journal this week about our Horizons I and Horizons II communities. Click here to read the article.

Here is a second article that was also printed in the Journal. Click here to read this article. 

Presenting:  Dr. Milan Wall, Heartland Center for Leadership Development

The Heartland Center in Lincoln, NE, helps local leaders respond to current and future challenges in their community by bringing people together to learn how to become better decision makers.

Milan Wall, Co-Director of the Heartland Center, is a management and communications expert with more than 30 years of experience in dealing with critical issues facing American society and culture.  Milan will work with SD communities to discover stategies useful for marketing their areas to future residents and businesses.

 Join us at one of the following locations:

• March 25 - Armour - Blue Moon
• March 26 - Philip - 73 Lounge
• March 27 - Conde - Community Center

We will begin each session with a free supper at 5:30 pm, followed by the seminar with Milan Wall.  We will wrap up at 9:15 pm.

Please RSVP to Kari at 688-4946 or fruechte.kari@ces.sdstate.edu at least 3 days prior to the event for a meal count!

It was a little slow out on the blogs these last few weeks, so I am going to hold off on naming a BOTW. We would love to see your community showing of some photos from the digital cameras. Or maybe your ready to try some of your videography skills?

 Show us what projects your community is working on or show your committees in action. I just sent the March Questions, maybe you can use the digital camera to record someone’s answer. I know a lot of communities are adding new bloggers too, so we may see some new and exciting posts in the next few weeks that are Blog of the Week material!

Kari Fruechte shared this resource list from the recent Housing Seminar. If your community was not able to attend, this might be a helpful place to start…

 Affordable Housing Agency List

Estelline was recently featured in a news story in the Brookings Register. Great job Estelline! Read the story here.

If other communities have been a recent news feature let us know so we can highlight it here and share the great work you are doing.  

OK, I know that the BOTW awards have been a little scattered lately so they may become more bi-weekly rather than weekly. And sometimes it’s one event or one post that can propel you to BOTW status–quality not quantity–here’s an example…

Oldham earns the BOTW title this week for their problem solving abilities! Faced with the challenge of the lack of high speed access for potential community bloggers, shortly after the blogging “Report Cards” were delivered in January, Oldham told us:

“Many who would like to blog do not have access to high speed Internet. Several have tried to use the blog with dial-up but our dial-up service is very slow at best. We are talking about ideas overcome this but any solution at this point involves getting people to more “meetings” and finding time for that is difficult.”

Sound familiar in your community? One of Oldham’s recent blog entries describes how they solved the problem! The local Internet provider, Alliance Communications was approached and agreed to offer FREE high speed to the Horizons group. Great job on being resourceful in your community and finding a way to solve the problem!

The Frederick Horizons group was recently featured on the front page of the Aberdeen American News talking about their plans for the Secret Garden.

 The Secret Garden is a project that started as an idea in Study Circles. The Frederick group hopes to make some big improvements in the next few years, to make the building a unique community asset.

Way to go Frederick!!  Click here to read more…

Here’s some information about grants available to communities from the Wellmark Foundation…

We are writing to share our 2008 Request for Proposals (RFP) for your review.  Please also feel free to contact us directly to discuss any project ideas you might like to advance through these funding opportunities. Our grant support will seek to support projects in childhood obesity prevention and community-based wellness and prevention.

There are several significant changes to the application process the RFP highlights around the introduction of a Letter of Interest, the ability to seek funding support for up to two-year project periods, and enhanced guidance around project budgeting.  We will be hosting an applicant teleconference on March 5th to further discuss these changes.  Call-in information is also highlighted within the RFP.  Please consider sharing this RFP with others throughout Iowa and South Dakota that you think might be interested or well positioned to seek funding support.
 
Thank you for your time and consideration.  Your assistance in sharing our funding opportunity is greatly appreciated.  

Here is the link to the Grant RFP. Letters of interest are due April 2, 2008 and August 21, 2008.

Thanks to Dan Oedekoven, Horizons Community Coordinator for passing along the information!

Carolyn Hendricks shared this with us, it is a grant opportunity from the Department of Agriculture for communities that are looking to plant trees. See the link here:

Challenge Grant

 Thanks to Carolyn for passing on this information to the rest of us!

Montrose is this week’s blog of the week! Montrose asked for input from some 5th graders on why “We Love Our City”. Sometimes adults get all caught up in the ins and outs of the business of community development…worries about money, time, energy etc. But kids have a way of simplifying things down to our CORE VALUES about community.

Some themes we heard from them include…caring people…people who work together to get things accomplished…people who are friendly and generous…the benefits of living in a small town and the list goes on.

 Thanks to the 5th Graders in Montrose we are reminded why working toward making our communities better places is so important for this generation and the next. Congratulations Montrose…thanks for sharing these stories and keep up the good work!

Communities can take advantage of the Regional Seminars being offered by SDSU Extension and the Horizons project. The first of these meetings was held in Mitchell on January 28th. Seminar #1 focused on Regional Collaborations & Community Foundations. Pictured here are some of the speakers for the evening, from the Horizons I project, Sr. Pegge Boehm, Sr. Darlene Gutenkauf and Margaret Lindskov along with Kari and Karla from SDSU. The other photo is South Dakota Community Foundation’s Noel Hamiel with Kari and Karla. Don’t forget the other upcoming seminars:

Seminar 2 - Economic Development/Entrepreneurial Support
Thurs. Feb. 7 – 4-H Building, Forestburg
Tue. Feb. 12 – Wall Community Center
Thur. Feb. 28 – Tripp Fire Hall
Thur. Mar. 6 – The Galley, Webster
Thur. Mar. 6 – TJ’s Café, Newell

Seminar 3 - Affordable Housing
Tue. Feb. 19 – Howard Legion Hall
Mon. Feb. 25 – Jiggers Restaurant, Kadoka

I’m not sure if anyone noticed or not, but the link to Kari’s Friday Findings had been broken for a while. But it is back again and has all the current Friday Findings from Kari. Lots of good info, and opportunities for communities.

Many of our communities are adding more new users, and trying to manage the blogs. We really appreciate the work and commitment that many of you are giving to your community. I have been responding to individual troubleshooting, and am always willing to do so. But we want to help you make this a positive experience for your communities, so you need to tell us what you need from us. We’d love some feedback, suggestions, requests for training etc. from your communities about the blogs. So if you have a suggestion, please leave a comment here, or pass it on to your Community Coordinator. Thanks for all you do for your community!

Where did the week go already! I was in Sisseton on Friday so I didn’t post this week’s BOTW, so here it is…

Sanborn Central has been named Blog of the Week for this past week for:

• Highlighting a community service that helps to alleviate poverty (the Food Pantry & Super Bowl of Caring)
• Explaining how Horizon’s and the work of community residents has changed the future of their 3 communities.
• Marketing the upcoming Regional Collaborations Seminar and being willing to learn from our first Horizons cluster of communities.

Congratulations to Forestburg, Artesian & Letcher for their continued progress!

 Faith has been named this week’s Blog of the Week for highlighting a Horizons project idea that has come to fruition in their community! A brand new fitness center was created with donated equipment. They started small, and are hoping to work their way up to a bigger, better one in the future. Great job on making things happen in your community! We’d love to see some pictures, how about a grand opening photo opportunity? Watch the Faith blogs for more in the future!

Estelline plan is finalized

By Michelle Sihrer, Staff Writer

Published: Thursday, January 17, 2008 12:16 PM CST

ESTELLINE — The Horizons program in Estelline recently released a finalized version of its strategic plan for the community. After surveying area residents, the group decided to focus on four areas: community coordination, community clean up and development, family activities and extended education.

Included in the community coordination plans are a welcome wagon and a community cable access channel.

“We are looking into the public access channel to see if there is some way of doing a short area range broadcast system… hopefully over the next couple of months the welcome wagon will be ready,” said Horizons member David Ebbers. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike from North Dakota has created a work around for dealing with the photo glitch some of you may be experiencing with Word Press. Click here for some instructions that may be helpful to you.

Estelline was featured in a recent news article in the Watertown Public Opinion…

Estelline plans farmer’s market
Published: Thursday, January 10, 2008 11:15 AM CST

ESTELLINE — The Estelline Horizons Program is organizing a farmer’s market in the area that will open this year. A committee has been formed and volunteers are still needed.Area residents interested in the farmer’s market are encouraged to attend a farmer’s market workshop at the Northern Plains Biostress Laboratory on the South Dakota State University campus in Brookings.To register for the workshop, log on to www.downtownbrookings.com and look under the events section.

Here’s a question from the bloggers in Murdo…

Does your community have a Chamber of Commerce?  Murdo bloggers are looking for suggestions on how to get current members to attend and get more involved in the monthly meetings.  We have been discussing this situation on our blog and would like other Horizon communities to share their ideas with us either here on the South Dakota site or on the Murdo blog site.  As Dan O. would say…..”Two heads are not enough!”   :-)

Leave a comment here, or go to the Murdo post on this topic at Chamber Meetings-Why Don’t Members Attend?

Ok, we are catching up a bit on the “BOTW” awards, so this is cumulative from late December into January. Tripp was chosen as this week’s blog of the week for adding videos! It was fun to see Tillie and Maureen, and the committee. Thanks for being willing to try a new technnology by adding video! Keep up the good work Tripp!

Some of our communities had the idea of creating farmers markets, here’s a good opportunity to learn something new…

Farmers market workshop set for Feb. 2

BROOKINGS, S.D. – The South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service will host a farmers market workshop Feb. 2.

The training session will be 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Northern Plains Biostress Laboratory on the campus of South Dakota State University, Brookings. Read the rest of this entry »