Montrose, SD

The title Grassroots and Groundwork was extremely appropriate for a conference Charla and I attended in Minneapolis May 28-30. The three-day conference, put on by the Northwest Area Foundation, focused on how we, as individuals and working together in our communities and organizations, can lay the groundwork for reducing poverty. Making a difference in poverty starts with the grassroots, at our level.

Charla and I were part of a large South Dakota delegation.  You can see all of us in the photo, thanks to Martha, who wanted our picture taken. South Dakotans came from Horizons communities and those in South Dakota Extension working with the Horizons program. We interacted with people from North Dakota, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Minnesota, Idaho and Washington–states covered by the Northwest Area Foundation.

Keynote speakers were excellent and inspiring. Donna Beegle put a different face to poverty. The daughter of migrant farmers, this woman was immersed in poverty most of her life. Finally, at age 25, as a high-school dropout and single mother with no job skills, she bravely took the first step toward breaking her cycle of generational poverty. Today she has her doctorate in educational leadership and works to improve communciation and relationships across race, class, gender and generational barriers. She is also founder and CEO of PovertyBridge, a nonprofit dedicated to changing lives for people in poverty. I was so inspired, I purchased her book “See Poverty. Be the Difference”. If anyone would like to read it, you can certainly borrow it.

Chip Heath from Stanford University is well known for his “How to Make Ideas Stick”course and book that explain why certain ideas survive and prosper–or ’stick’–in society. For all of us at the conference, it makes us think about how we can get people to think differently about poverty. What will it take to make society realize we must be willing to take care of the least among us. What will get these ideas to ’stick’. Charla and I both got a copy of his book at registration–and it looks very interesting. Again, if someone would like to borrow it, please let me know.

We heard a panel of experts discuss what difficult steps we must take to make a real dent in poverty. And our final speaker was Thomas Vilsack. Former governor of Iowa, Vilsack ranas a candidate for the U.S. Presidency until announcing his withdrawal from the race in February 2007. His was a very inspirational message–telling us we must make people really see, taste, feel and smell what poverty is like.

In between speakers, we participated in numerous break-out sessions–hearing specific examples of what people are doing in different states to make a positive difference in reducing poverty–and getting ideas that we can hopefully bring back to Montrose or utilize someway in our lives. These break-out sessions included how to utilize our community’s social capital, tapping into our community’s strengths, advocacy strategies for financial justice, realizing human rights,  acting to end hunger: 40 ways to make a difference..

I walked away from the conference with a better understanding of how we often misunderstand poverty and those who live it, and how as a great nation we must take care of the least among us. Perhaps most important, a lot of people left the conference inspired to come home and make a difference. If anyone would like to find out more, please comment and let’s start a conversation!!

Thanks to the Northwest Area Foundation for covering our expenses to the conference. As I got ready to leave for Minneapolis, all I could think about was the time it would take and what I wasn’t going to get done in terms of my job or at home. But once I got there, I realized this is where the important work is being done–and the rest would wait until I got home! It was well worth the time.

Someone recently posed a question to me concerning if my becoming a member of Horizons had anything to do with my running for the office of Mayor of Montrose, after thinking about it, I found that being a Horizon member had played a very large part in my running for office. I considered that being in a position of trust, with help from the the community we could make our town a better place for all. This community has a very great story to tell and we as members need to work together to keep our community vibrant and keep our young people from leaving, we can only accomplish this by forgetting the sometime pettiness of things that bother us and start thinking of how things were, how things are now, and how we want Montrose to become in the future. Montrose is a fine community to live in and raise a family, we have a very fine school, swimming pool, daycare center, parks, RV park, we have much to offer and now we must get the word out. WE ARE MONTROSE ON THE MOVE

Well day 1 of training is come and gone. Today was about how we should think outside the box. Start getting our young people thinking about how they could contribute to their communities. The youth of our communities are our secret weapon,get them involved and start to organize themselves and they will provide much needed ideas. The whole idea of HTC is based on 4 pillars these are Entrepreneurship, Transfer of Wealth, Youth and Leadership. Establishing an Entrepreneurial Development System or EDS. This system approach gets results by investing in people who have ideas. True entrepreneurs have ability to assemble a team and get people motivated. Tomorrow we will go into detail concerning the 4 pillars. Go Montrose………Tony

I’m sure the woman from Montrose who called me last night isn’t alone. She’s older and still in her own home, but incapable of handling certain house-related jobs–specifically cleaning leaves out of her eaves. Or, it may be cleaning her walks in the winter, mowing lawn in the summer, or fixing a leaking faucet anytime of the year. She would like to have a way that people with needs can match up those with skills. She’s willing to pay people for their services, but doesn’t know how to find them.

 What’s great is that developing a community job pool was one of our initial objectives during our strategic planning meeting.  But when we began writing our implementation steps, we decided to leave it out for now for security reasons. Our concern? How would we build in security to protect children who might answer a job pool request and then be exploited or harmed?

I’d like to know, is any other community trying to match up skills with needs? If so, could you provide some tips on how to establish such a program and keep it safe? How could you manage it? Who would manage it? Where could you publish a skill-to-need list (paper, blog, web site, posters…) Thanks for any input someone might have. Perhaps we need to put it back into our objective list. Martha, I also remember that you provided us with a web site to check out on this topic. I’ll find it and take a look! Thanks.

I had a pleasant surprise last night. I had put an article in this week’s Montrose Herald (town weekly paper) about our blogging site, inviting people to check out the site and enter the discussion. I also reminded those that didn’t have access to the Internet to call Amy or I and we’d get their ideas expressed.

Lo and behold, an older Montrose resident called. She had seen the article and wanted to share one of her concerns–and needs–as a part of this community. She doesn’t have a computer, but she did have a phone and the desire to enter into the conversation. It was wonderful to see the community network alive–and it’s because of the Horizon’s program. Now, we hope others will join in–and log on.

I’m going to bring up her idea–and it’s a good one–in another post. And, I’ll be checking on the blogs of other communities to see if they’ve tackled this particular need. Another exciting aspect is that what she needs is something we discussed in our  strategic planning sessions, but put on a back burner. Perhaps we’ll have to move it up to a higher action item.

I have always been one to try to find the positive in every situation.  In my mind, having a negative attitude didn’t make sense - it just made the situation worse.  I found out differently yesterday.

In speaking with a fellow Montrose-area resident about our Horizons project and the changes that we would like to see, some comments came up that really got me “fired up”.  When discussing the changes that I (and many others from the community) would like to see, I was told “that will never happen - not in my lifetime, and not in yours.  Too many people like this town just the way it is, why change things?  We never had that before, why do we need that now?” 

At first I was thinking that an attitude like that is part of the problem.  But after some thought it occurred to me - that may be just the thing to get us moving!  I know it gave me more determination to get things done.  It showed me that we need ALL types of people and attitudes to keep “Montrose On The Move”!

One thing we learned in the Horizons Study Circles is that poverty isn’t  just about the income of our residents. Some of our residents may simply be unaware of the resources of our community. That’s why we’ve put together the Montrose Resource Book–a list of businesses, organizations AND services that we have available in Montrose.

A good example is that while we may not have a pharmacy in Montrose, we do have delivery from Salem Drug to the Montrose General Store. That can be a real resource for senior citizens, or anyone else who wants the convenience of medicines being delivered right in their own backyard. It’s one more way we’re trying to make a difference to fight poverty in our community.