Like many types of community infrastructure, rural emergency services are stretched to — and often beyond — a breaking point. This Star-Tribune editorial lays out the many challenges facing rural ambulance service, and spotlights some approaches to start addressing them. Reprinted with permission from the Star-Tribune editorial board. For more information about rural EMS and a …
You know that feeling you get when you walk through your front door after a long while gone? That instantaneous action, and reaction, of filling your lungs with air that is uniquely yours that smells, tastes and wraps around you in a way that cheers, “You’re home!” That was the feeling bursting from the hearts …
Classes at many college campuses, including our area’s Minnesota North schools, are getting started. The cost of college makes headlines a lot these days – as it should. Students have shouldered an incredible amount of debt in recent years as they pursued their dreams of school after high school, and Minnesota students and families have …
What “counts” as rural depends on who you ask. And while the my-town-is-smaller-than-your-town squabble can be just a bit of fun between rival sports teams or neighboring towns, the size and classification of a community has very real dollars-and-cents impacts. A recent Center on Rural Innovation article highlighted that there are more than a dozen …
As summer vacation gets in full swing, it’s the perfect time to celebrate our area students – especially the seniors graduating from high school. Enjoy this collection of pics and videos of the capable young people who add energy and excitement to our communities all year long. Seniors – we celebrate this important milestone with …
Historic. Unique. Unprecedented. Once-in-a-lifetime. These are just a few words folks are using to talk about federal dollars soon-to-be available to rural communities. And while the injection of billions has the potential to make real and lasting change in rural communities, the barriers that make federal money dang-near impossible to access should be front-and-center as …
Hard work is a staple in almost any rural community. A hard day’s work might be on the assembly line or in a clinic, at the computer or deep in the belly of a mine. Whatever the job, every working-age person contributing their skills and talents lay the foundation for a growing, thriving community. As rural communities in Minnesota …
Tasha Connelly left Grand Rapids after high school and didn’t think anything would ever bring her back. But after years away living in other states, including Florida and Colorado, the usual things began to chip away at her resolve: family ties, a desire for more community, the lure of less traffic. She eventually returned, but …
The idea started small. Anjeni del Real, a young person of the Ojibwe, Santee Sioux and Blackfeet tribal nations, imagined a coordinated pow wow among tribes celebrating Census 2020. “I wanted to indigenize Census 2020 because it’s so important to our Native communities,” said Anjeni, currently a college student at Haskell Indian Nations University in …
Running between appointments with a sick kid at home, Blandin Leadership alum Jessica Velasco pressed pause on her busy day to talk about the 2020 Census. It’s a topic close to her heart because, as a Hispanic woman, she knows the impacts it can have on communities of color in her hometown of Worthington, Minn. …