It all started in a corner of the town’s Target parking lot in 1999 and today it takes two hockey arenas to contain it. In just four hours on April 16, more than 3,000 children and caretakers gobbled up the resources and fun of the 13th annual Children First! Children’s Fair in Grand Rapid, Minnesota. …
Last Friday, 26 residents of the Aitkin and Palisade area wrapped up their five-day Blandin Community Leadership Program retreat. North-central Minnesota’s Aitkin County, home to both communities, spans a portion of Minnesota’s lake country. Tourism and timber are important here, as is community collaboration.
Storytelling is a rich and vibrant part of Native American culture. Some online videos caught our attention recently; they offer powerful stories of Native Americans’ experiences. In O-Gitch-I-Dah Talking Circle about the FAFSA (22 minutes), Native American students at a north-central Minnesota community college tell their stories about filling out the Free Application for Federal …
Rural aficionado Michael Knutson’s tweets yesterday mentioned “third places” – a term, we discovered, used in community planning to identify a community’s social gathering places, like pubs, diners and coffeehouses. People also have “first places” (home) and “second places” (work) in communities. Together, these three types of place give communities, rural communities included, their sense …
It’s that time again… Census data to drive conversation about state demographics and community health. With the release of more 2010 Census data on March 15, that conversation has seen a spike. Some of the most interesting rural-focused coverage is out of Aaron Brown’s MinnesotaBrown blog and Dave Peters’ coverage in Minnesota Public Radio’s Ground …
Stevens County is home to 22 freshly trained, energized leaders. The most recent cohort of Blandin Community Leadership Program , the residents from Hancock and Morris, Minn., spent the last full week in February focused on their community’s shared assets and honing their leadership skills. They will finish up with workshops in May and July. More …
Minnesota’s spotlight is on its leaders, at every level, who are trying to do more with fewer resources. State legislators, especially, have their work cut out for them as the “cut vs. tax” debate persists.
Chances are, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wasn’t visualizing a rural county in northern Minnesota when he spoke last Wednesday to the Citizens Budget Commission of New York City. He was just leveraging this 40,000-resident community’s research and experiences.
A recent blog post at Daily Yonder, Grants for Rural Development in Decline, is a treasure-trove of data related to rural-focused grantmaking – and a good discussion of the challenges rural grant-makers face. While lamenting the dearth of grants made by large, national foundations, author Rick Cohen acknowledges the ongoing commitment to rural by regional …
For anybody trying to make our communities a better place to live, especially those tackling poverty, a recent report out of the Northwest Area Foundation has amazing value. They looked hard at their ideas, processes and practices over their ten years exploring ways to reduce poverty. The bottom line? President and CEO Kevin Walker bravely …