South Dakota

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!