Archive for the ‘Community Development’ Category

Population Decline: a “Main Event”

September 7th, 2011

Population decline is the “main event” and just not a symptom of another problem (i.e. – the lack of jobs).  That’s the message shared by Caleb Pollard in a recent blog post titled “Solving Population Decline in Rural Nebraska.” Caleb is the Executive Director at the Ord Area Chamber of Commerce.  He makes this point while advocating that Nebraskans support a legislative resolution authorizing an interim study on rural population decline.  For some people, this argument may seem like semantics.  After all, economic opportunities and population growth or decline are tightly connected.  I for one agree with Caleb.  It is time that we look at the health of our communities through the lens of why people move to and from rural communities.  Luckily, I see good resources beginning to be developed in this area.  For instance the Center for Applied Rural Innovations has created a section on their website called the Buffalo Commons.  Similarly, the University of Minnesota Extension has begun sharing similar resources on their website in a section titled Brain Gain in Minnesota.  I'm not sure what a legislative study on rural population decline will accomplish, but I think it's a significant step that Nebraska's policy makers are begining to see rural population decline as the "main event."

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Yes, size does matter in community development

August 30th, 2011

What is your small town’s competitive advantage?  If you are uncertain, you need to listen to DeLon Mork’s commentary in the following video.  He believes that being small has its advantages. DeLon owns a Dairy Queen in Madison, SD (pop. 6474).  For the past six years running, his store has sold more Blizzards as a part of the Miracle Treat Day than any other Dairy Queen in North America.  (source: "Small Town Dairy Queen Smashes Blizzard Record,"  Daryn Kagen, DarynKagen.com, )  Although DeLon is talking about the competitive advantage of his business, the same holds true for small towns.  But being small doesn’t guarantee success.   It’s how you use this competitive advantage that matters most.  For DeLon that means building relationships.  He makes a concerted effort to get to know people in his community. Helping people in your small town is a great way to take advantage of your community’s small size.  But it’s probably not the only way. What’s happening in your small town?  How are you using your small size to your advantage?   Note:  Thanks to Linda Salmonson from the REED Fund for passing along this video.

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Maroney Commons & 3 Reasons Rural Rocks

August 22nd, 2011

During the Grand Opening for the Maroney Commons last week, I was reminded of numerous #ReasonsRuralRocks.  (Read “Reasons Rural Rocks” to learn the #ReasonsRuralRocks project.) Before reading my list, I would encourage you to watch the recording of the ribbon cutting ceremony, which I’ve embedded below.  Perhaps some of the dignitaries will inspire you to add your own #ReasonsRuralRocks to the list.

Video of the Grand Opening Celebration

  (click here if you are having trouble viewing the video in the browser. )  

3 Reasons Rural Rocks

Because time is short, I’ll highlight only three of my reasons #ReasonsRuralRocks.  Feel free to add yours. 1) Rural people are great at help you clean up following an event. After the ceremony ended, everyone was invited to tour the new facility and enjoy some refreshments. Rather than partake in the refreshments, however, many audience members jumped in to help staff members who were clearing the chairs from Main Street so that it be reopened. Their help saved us a ton of time. Maybe this same volunteerism happens in urban areas as well, but it is always refreshing to receive unsolicited help. 2) Life in rural communities is rich in community life. I often tell people that I love homecoming parades in small towns because they epitomize the strong social bonds that exist in rural communities. Events like the Maroney Commons grand opening are very similar. People from all over the region joined local residents in the celebration and rekindle old friendships. There’s nothing better. 3) Where else can city dwellers go to enjoy a beautiful, starry evening in a cornfield?  Later in the evening, I met some visitors from a city on the East Coast who were in town for the event. None of them had ever walked through a cornfield. And as strange as it may sound, one of the guys explained that it was on his “bucket list.” In an effort to accommodate him, a friend helped us get permission from a landowner to walk through his field. I then joined the group on their walk through the cornfield, presumably to make sure they didn’t get lost. I probably didn’t enjoy the walk as much as they did, but meeting new friends was awesome.  

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Maroney Commons: What is it?

August 17th, 2011

“What is that huge, new building being built on Howard’s Main Street?” That’s a question I’ve fielded more than once in the last year. I usually respond by telling people “It’s the Maroney Commons (or a previous iteration of the name), and it’s the culmination of a decade-long effort to build a place where rural community leaders can gather to work on the future of their communities.  It’s also a place that will offer workforce development training for people looking to enter the renewable energy fields." If no questions immediately emerge, I follow up saying, “It  will house a restaurant, hotel, and conference training facility, and cost over $6.5 million to build.” Unfortunately, this description is inadequate, but it usually starts a conversation. Joe Bartmann, President of the Rural Learning Center, does a much better job of explaining.  For that reason, I asked him to flesh out the details of the project in the video below.    

A bold vision

Joe’s right.  It is a bold vision.  But that type of thinking is not new to Howard and Miner County.  It was just ten years ago this October that Howard launched its efforts in the wind energy field by becoming the first municipality in South Dakota to own and operate wind turbines. Sitting on the edge of Howard on Hwy 34, passerbiers will see two wind turbines that helped launched a growth in jobs for the region.  They also serve as a symbol for how the community is attempting to reimagine its future. In many ways, the construction of the Maroney Commons is a continuation of that effort.

Why is that important?

Last June, Karl Stauber penned two articles in the Daily Yonder calling for a New Rural America.  In these articles, he cited Miner County as one of the communities working towards that goal.  (read them here and here.) While there’s a lot to learn from Karl’s comments, what struck me was his belief that rural communities need to continually reinvent their competitive advantage.  Agriculture alone cannot provide a future for our small towns.  Equally important, he goes on to say that the speed at which communities need to reinvent themselves is accelerating.  He writes:
Historically, communities had to create a new competitive advantage every 50 to 70 years….  Today the cycle is every 10 to 15 years, which, in reality, means that communities must be continually reinventing their economies.”
Building the Maroney Commons is a bold vision for the Miner County community and not without its risks.  But rural communities everywhere have to dream big.  They have to find ways to reinvent themselves.  And if Karl is correct, they must do it every 10 to 15 years. As I wrote the other day, Howard will celebrate the opening of the Maroney Commons on Thursday at 1:00 pm. More information can be found here.  We hope you will join us.

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Holding conversations about rural places in rural places

August 15th, 2011

In June 1997, I travelled to Matfield Green, KS for a weeklong summer workshop on place based education.  Matfield Green is located in the scenic Flint Hills of Eastern Kansas.  Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, and several of his friends had purchased the lumber yard, the school, and several old homes in the community.  With a population of well under 100, Matfield Green epitomizes the decline of Rural America.   The workshop was simply awesome.  Rather than sit in a university classroom and listen to a professor lecture about teaching methodologies, we experienced the process of place based education first-hand; each professor used the natural and cultural surroundings of the Flint Hills (i.e. – the place) to teach us about the concepts of place based education.  It was learning by doing, and it definitely stuck with me. Like most conferences and training sessions, the experience was also shaped by the conversations with other participants. Each evening, impromptu conversations with other rural educators helped deepen my understanding of both education and life in rural communities.  Over the years as I’ve reflected on that week in Matfield Green, I have realized that my experience was shaped by the fact that the training was held in a small town and not a conference center somewhere else.  I truly believe that the conversations that week would have been very different had they taken place in Minneapolis, Kansas City, or some other urban place.  In fact, since that time,  I’ve taken offense to the barrage of conference invitations to discuss rural issues while meeting in urban places.  I mention this today because later this week, the Rural Learning Center will be holding a grand opening for the new Maroney Commons.  It’s a six million dollar conference and training facility that is being built in Howard, SD.  It will make it much easier for rural leader in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa to hold conversations about rural issues while meeting in a rural place.  We’ll share more about the facility throughout the week, but I want to extend an invitation to anyone who hasn’t already heard about the event so that they can attend.

Date:  Thursday, June 18 Time:  1:00 pm Place:  Main Street, Howard, SD

For more Information contact 605-772-5153.

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Posted in Community Development, Rural, Training and Events | Comments (2)

Reasons Rural Rocks

August 5th, 2011

While Rural America has been pummeled lately in the media about the stale, old news of declining population, some new friends in Alberta have been talking up a storm about why life in rural communities “rocks.”  It started last week when Odessa Sherbaniuk  (@sherbani) created the #ReasonsRuralRocks hashtag and asked rural fans to respond.  Twitter users everywhere respond immediately.  After only a couple days, Sherbaniuk had enough responses to write a blog post sharing her top 10 favorites of the week. 

To give you a flavor, I’ve copied the top 5 from her list below.  You’ll have to read her blog post to get the rest or begin following the #ReasonsRuralRocks hashtag yourself.  5. Lower cost of living allowing me to work less and play more! @plind 4. Watching a storm roll in and smelling the scent of rain in the air. @MyRuralRoots 3. Water that tastes like water. @karla_kerrigan 2. Rush minute instead of rush hour. @ARDNpaul 1. Coming back home after years of being gone and hearing people call you by your first name. @onepercentyello  (Source: “#ReasonsRuralRocks Top Ten July 25-29” ). 

I’ve contributed a couple tweets to the list myself.  In fact yesterday, after returning from an interview with a second-year teachers in a rural school as a part of our GoTeachSD project, I felt compelled to tweet:  “Children in rural schools often receive more personal attention from their teachers because of small class sizes. #ReasonsRuralRocks.”   Listening to this passionate young teacher reminded me of the countless stories teachers have shared with me over the last year highlighting the differences they are making in the lives of rural children everywhere.  I’m sure you have your own reasons for loving life in rural communities.  Sometimes, we just need to pause for a moment and remind ourselves of those reasons.  Odessa Sherbaniuk deserves credit for reminding us to do so.  If you don’t have a Twitter account, feel free to share your thoughts here. I’ll post them for you, and give you credit.  It’s a list that I’m hoping will continue to grow from a long time to come.

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So, is it a “third place” or not?

July 29th, 2011

Does your community have a third place?  A place outside of the home (first place) and work (second place) where people gather for conversation?  A place where community is built? Whenever I mention to people that a coffee shop can be third places, people often jump to the conclusion that their local coffee shop is a third place.  Maybe it is; maybe it isn’t; but how do you tell? Andrew Bernhardt and Linda Stoll offer some clarification on the subject.  In their article title, titled “Creating Third Places: Places where communities gather,” they write:
Third places take many shapes. But, it is not the physical nature of the place that makes it a third place. Instead, a third place is characterized by social interaction. When people gather together, their social interaction can range from passive to active.”
They go on to define the two terms:
Passive social interaction is a shared experience wherein no direct interaction with other people takes place. Examples include dining in a public restaurant or gathering to watch live music, movies or a sporting event. Active social interaction involves direct interaction with other people. In the case of third places, this generally occurs with people you do not know very well or even at all. Active interaction includes introductions, discourse, and conversation. Truly successful third places promote active interaction.  (source:  “Creating Third Places: Places where communities gather,” Andrew Bernhardt and Linda Stoll, Downtown Economics, Dec. 2010.)
I like that distinction.  A public place must have active social interaction to be considered a third place.  And for me, the key is that this interaction must take place with people you do not know very well. Building conversations with people you don’t know very well is tough; but it is also vital for rural communities who want to build stronger social capital. In our work at the Rural Learning Center, we often discover that weak levels of social capital, especially bridging social capital, prevent rural communities from accomplishing their economic development goals.  Simply put, when people in a community don’t trust each other, it is difficult to get things done. If that’s the case in your town, maybe developing a third place is part of the answer.

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Third Places: Is it time for a refresher?

July 27th, 2011

Say it ain’t so; has it really been over a year and a half since I last wrote anything substantive about the role of third places in rural communities?  I awoke to this reality a couple weeks ago when the urban place-making community began sharing one of my blog posts on Twitter.  Titled “10 Reasons ‘Third Places’ matter to Rural Communities,” the article identifies why I think coffee shops, pubs, community centers, and other informal meeting places are important to the community and economic development of small towns.  If you are unfamiliar with the concept of third places, I’d recommend you read the original article. 

Is it time for a refresh?

Seeing others take interest in my article causes me to wonder if it’s time to refresh the article.  To begin that process, I’ve started some online research.  Here are a few of the articles I found worth sharing:   

“Creating Third Places: Places where communities gather.”  Published in Downtown Economics, a publication of the Wisconsin Cooperative Extension Agency, the article may offer the most concise description of third places and the value they offer communities that I have read.  Without spelling it out, the authors also provide the framework for distinguishing between informal meeting places like coffee shops that are third places and those that are not.  (More on that later.)

“The Restorative Qualities of an Activity-Based, Third Place Café for Seniors.”  This article suggests that third places help improve the mental health of senior citizens by providing them a place to build relationships.  Considering the aging population of many of our rural communities, this article adds credence to the argument that “third places help seniors age in place.”

“Back to the coffee house.”  Written as a part of a special report on the changing nature of the news industry for The Economist, this article suggests that the rise of social media is a return to the days of when the news travelled by word of mouth, often in coffee shops and taverns.  The article does not use the term to third place to describe social media, but anyone who understands the concept will recognize the implications.  

Although these are quality resources on third places, I was disappointed that I didn’t discover anything that provided me an opportunity to update my article. I feel like I must be missing something.  If you can offer any insights or links to articles and research that can help me update my perspective on how third places impact rural communities, I’d love to hear from you.  If third places are as important to rural communities as I think they are, articles such as mine need to be refreshed once in a while.  Photo credit:  dyobmit - Flickr

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Rural Economic Development Comes from Within

July 8th, 2011

While researching online yesterday, I stumbled across a video produced by the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.  The video’s title, “Rural Economic Development Comes from Within,” immediately drew me in because it is a founding principle of our work at the Rural Learning Center. The video provides an overview of two Alberta communities who used a process called the Business Vitality Initiative (BVI) to develop action plans for their community development efforts.  Started in 2009 as a pilot project, the initiative was designed to help communities assess their capacity to work with and support entrepreneurship.  I like that the process helps communities build on existing assets within the community.  I was also particularly impressed by Project Coordinator Patricia Macklin’s closing comment, “The future of our rural Alberta communities will involve harnessing the passion, imagination, and resources of community people.” I couldn’t agree more. (Source:  "Rural Econmomic Development Comes from Within,"  AlbertaAgriculture, YouTube, March 3, 2010) If you watch the video and want to learn a bit more, I’d recommend checking out the Ministry’s website.  The page provides links to each community’s BVI assessment report as well as an evaluation of the program conducted by an outside firm.  I also discovered that the Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurial Leadership, which facilitates the BVI process, offers a thorough description of the initiative on their website.  I’ve embedded a video they produced below.  As I listened to it, I was struck by some of the similarities to the Community Vision Meetings that helped launch our efforts in Miner County back in the late 1990s.  ("Community Vitality Initiative," CIEL, Viddler, ) I wish I had more time right now to dig deeper into the BVI process; hopefully, that comes in the future.  But for today, it serves as a good reminder -- Rural Economic Development Comes from Within.

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Who is your go-to source for rural education?

July 7th, 2011

Thanks to Alan Richard, the Director of Communications at Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), I’ve recently become a fan of the rural education blog posts at Education Week.  Written by Diette Courrege, the blog posts covers a range of education topics.   Her posts are quickly becoming my go-to source for information on rural education. A second source of information is the Daily Yonder.  My favorite author there on educational issues is Dr. Caitlin Howley.  She has a flare for social justice issues, and isn’t afraid to stand up for rural schools. On a more local level, I also follow the Rural School Partnership.  I appreciate how they regularly update their website with information on their efforts to connect philanthropy, scholarships for rural students, and place-based education in the Ozarks.  Their work serves as a source of inspiration.  Unfortunately, this is a short list.  It’s way too short for a person who professes that education is a key driver for the economic success of our rural communities.  And that’s where I hope you can help.  Where do you go for information on rural education?

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