Posts Tagged ‘Rural Learning Center’

South Dakota at its Best

September 4th, 2009

At the Maroney Rural Learning Center groundbreaking ceremony, Kevin Walker, President of the Northwest Area Foundation, quoted late 18th Century visionary William Blake saying “What is now proved was once only imagined.” Walker also noted that although brilliant, Blake was considered insane by his contemporaries for his unusual ideas and idiosyncrasies.

That quote resonated with me.  When the idea of building the Rural Learning Center was first proposed seven to eight years ago, many people thought it was insane.

That’s why the Citi Foundation grant to the project was so affirming.  And now, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader published an editorial titled “Howard learning center is S.D. at its best.”

Who knows maybe we are not so crazy after all. 

     

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Why does “Rural” matter?

September 2nd, 2009

In our part of the country, most rural communities have experienced 50-80 years of economic decline.  This decline often leads to feelings of despair and hopelessness. 

A Sense of Hope

At the Rural Learning Center (RLC), however, we have a sense of empowerment and hopefulness.  We base that optimism in part on the progress being made in Howard, South Dakota and surrounding Miner County, where our work began.

Two of the most compelling signs of that progress include the Howard municipal sales tax revenues and the construction of the second phase to the Rural Learning Center.

 

How did you get started in Miner County?

As Randy Parry, President of the RLC, indicates in the video below titled “How did you get started in Miner County?” our work began with high school students studying local sales tax trends. Seeking to make an impact, these students shared their learning with the citizens of Howard.  Their efforts as well as the innovative community development work that followed sparked an “invest in local” movement  resulting in significant business investment that translated into  record sales tax revenues.   (see image above)

Today, we are celebrating the groundbreaking for Phase II of the Rural Learning Center in Howard.  Dignitaries from around the country will be in attendance to help us celebrate and “reimagine” the possibilities for our rural places.

Why does Rural Matter?

But as we do, I think it is important that we reflect on why rural communities matter and why the Rural Learning Center is important to their futures. 

To help initiate that conversation, I’ve produced a short video in which I asked Rural Learning Center employees those very questions.  I hope it spurs you to reflect and share your thoughts on the subject.

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A Remarkable Event, for Rural Places Everywhere

August 28th, 2009

The Rural Learning Center is celebrating the beginning of a new phase in their history next week.  On Wednesday, September 2nd the Rural Learning Center will break ground on the Maroney Rural Learning Center.  The center will house renewable energy and rural community training space, a restaurant, kitchen and hotel in a certified LEED Platinum building, all on Howard’s Main Street. 

The Maroney Rural Learning Center is part of the ongoing, strategic work of the Rural Learning Center, which has been working in Howard and surrounding Miner County for the past 15 years on economic development, housing development, and growing capacity of local leaders and organizations.  The expanded facility will allow the Rural Learning Center to host community based groups who come to learn about community development and an innovative renewable energy job training program, specifically.  Additional uses for the facility include space for local gatherings and rural conferences/ trainings.

The groundbreaking program will feature partners of the Rural Learning Center, including Pam Flaherty, President and CEO of Citi Foundation, Ken Stork, President and CEO of Citibank South Dakota, Kevin Walker, President and CEO of the Northwest Area Foundation, and Bob Sutton, President of the South Dakota Community Foundation.  Pam Flaherty (Citi Foundation) will present a $250,000 grant to the Rural Learning Center specifically in support of their efforts to building the Maroney Rural Learning Center and the renewable energy job training program. 

Event details follow.  We hope to see you on Wednesday!

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Architects of Change - Midwest Rural Assembly preview

August 10th, 2009

On Monday Aug. 10th, rural leaders from across the Midwest will converge on Sioux Falls for the Midwest Rural Assembly.  The focus of the conference is a discussion about the future of Midwestern rural communities.  It will build on the policy work established by the National Rural Assembly, held June16-18, 2008.

I’ve been very impressed with the efforts to date.  All the organizing groups hold disparate interests, but have worked to not let those differences divide and splinter the effort.  It leads me to believe it will be a productive conference.

As we enter the meetings, I’d like to give everyone a sneak peak at a pictorial presentation Randy Parry, President of the Rural Learning Center, will debut during his opening remarks.  Whether you are attending the conference or not, I would encourage you to listen closely to the lyrics of the song by Monte Selby.  Although written about educational leadership, I believe they hold great meaning for rural leaders. 

 

(  presentation created by Morgan Andenas, RLC Intern)

 I hope you agree with me about the relevancy of those words.  Within our hands, we have the power to create a vision and a plan for the future of rural places.  And yes, we can become the architects of change.

 

Note:  Monte Selby is an exceptionally talented musician and presenter.  Check out his work at his website. 

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Green neighborhoods

June 12th, 2009

How “green” is your neighborhood?  A new LEED certification program for Neighborhood Developments (ND) will help communities figure that out. 

As many are aware, the Rural Learning Center has been developing a LEED platinum Conference and Training Center in Howard, SD.  The LEED certification program uses levels (platinum, gold, silver, and certified) to help people understand how “green” a building is. This new guide will focus on neighborhoods.  

I haven’t spent much time thinking about how green our rural communities are or if this rating system works for rural places. I do, however, like that the guide takes walkability and historic preservation into consideration. It would be fun to hear what others, who know more, have to say.

The plan is in its pilot stage, and the US Building Council is calling for public comment.

I became aware of the guide because the National Trust for Historic Preservation is requesting people to comment on the need to strengthen some preservation aspects to the guide.  To learn more, check out this blog post. 

But, if you want to comment, don’t wait long.  You only have until Sunday, June 14th.

Photo Credit:  Udall Legacy Bus Tour/Flick

Resources:

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Letting Go of Your Leadership Grip

January 17th, 2009

As mentioned by Mike in an earlier post, the Rural Learning Center and other partner organizations have been helping the folks in the former mining town of Lead, South Dakota for a bit more than a year now. We recently wrapped up our work there at a “community forum,” and passed the torch to the Lead Comprehensive Plan Commission. You can read stories from Black Hills Pioneer (click here) and Rapid City Journal (click here) about that gathering. KELO TV in Sioux Falls, SD also ran this story yesterday on the process taking shape there in Lead.

Becoming Stewards, not Managers

There were good things in each of these media stories. But something very important was missing. The organizers in Lead are doing something radical–they are forming a movement of change by letting go of their grip on the process. They’re becoming stewards and hosts of a movement owned by the people, instead of managing projects and recruiting volunteers.

I was in Mitchell, SD yesterday giving a talk at the Women in Blue Jeans Conference about becoming “radical leaders” in rural communities (you can see my slides here). One woman in the audience was particularly troubled by my suggestion that radical (and great) small town leaders are learning to build up a tribe of people who share their passions and values, and then to just be helpful, connect, empower and celebrate those people as they decide what to work on toward that shiny future. Groups of people don’t do what you want, they do what they want.

And that’s the whole point. When the decisions and direction are held by a small group in rural communities (or any community), it becomes increasingly difficult to find people who want to work on your ideas. What the leaders in Lead, SD are doing is being helpful as the community decides what purpose and values they share, and letting them choose to work on their own ideas toward those goals.

They’re recognizing that for someone to have energy and take responsibility for a project or goal, it has to be something that she really believes will make a difference, and that is deeply meaningful to her.  The job of leaders shifts from deciding and directing to listening, connecting, inspiring and empowering.

Fragile and Chaotic

Before I left Lead last week, I gave this baby Ponderosa Pine tree to the Comprehensive Plan Commission (the group taking on that Steward of the Movement role). It came from a pine cone I picked up on a walk in Lead early this past Autumn. Leading a movement of change is kind of like caring for a baby tree. It’s very fragile at first. And it can grow very slowly. But, given the right love and care, it can become a towering, majestic mountain forest.

Creating a shiny future that doesn’t exist yet takes bravery and empathy. And a willingness to allow just enough healthy chaos into the picture.

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Intentional Communities

January 13th, 2009

A friend and fellow blogger recently turned me on to a post at New Geography titled “A Local Graduation: How Small Towns Can Come Back.”  Under the banner of “Localism“, the author, Sylvia L. Lovely, argues that towns need to turn their energies inward and make the best of the resources at hand. 

I love that the author celebrates this inward focus.  Engaging the local citizenry and the developing local assets are critical to future of our rural communities. But Lovely make an additional statement that I believe warrants further discussion:

What you need to build is an intentional city. The intentional city is the middle way — where both the need to attract creative people and the need to sustain traditional economic and social bases co-exist.

Jim Beddow, of the Rural Learning Center, has been calling on communities to “be intentional” for years.  This effort derives from the observation that most rural communities in the Upper Midwest were born organically to support farmers in the countryside.  Since the time of their founding, however, few communities have been intentional about their futures.  

It’s this lack of intentionality that has prevented rural communities in the Upper Midwest from adapting to a new economy- one where farms don’t exist on every section of land.

Lovely apparently believes that being intentional means that communities need to balance the creative economy Richard Florida has identified with the traditional economy and society that currently exists in communities.  Not bad advice, but I’ll let each community decide for itself what it wants for its future.  What’s more important is that communities are intentional and develop the strategies that will enable them to achieve whatever future they envision.

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KSFY report on Rural Learning Center facility

December 30th, 2008

KSFY News hit the road this weekend and ended up in Howard, SD where they interviewed Randy Parry, President of the Rural Learning Center, concerning the planned Maroney Rural Learning Center facility.

To view the report, click here. 

The story ran Sunday evening.  In addition to the proposed facility, it nicely highlighted the positive happenings in Howard and surrounding Miner County.   Unfortunately, the story focused on what the Rural Learning Center facility will do for Howard and not on what it means for other rural places.

As Parry recently told me, “We are building this facility to share learning with other rural communities and collaborate with partners to explore the many possibilities in Reimagining Rural America.” In other words, the goal of the project is to create a place that helps rural communities solve their problems. 

The above statement hits at the heart of what the project is about.  Coming from the rural economic development field, I’ve long believed one of the greatest challenges facing rural communities is the difficulties we face in “networking” and learning from others in similar situations.

It’s safe for me to say that the best ideas and projects I’ve ever been a part of developing came from listening to other rural residents; and then figuring out how what they learned applied in my community. 

So do we need a physical place for this to happen?  The simple answer is yes.  While I firmly believe that the Internet, blogs, and other forms of technology  –like TrueThinker – can help facilitate learning, nothing will ever replace the power of learning from face-to-face human interaction.  

The fact that the facility is being created in a rural setting like Howard, rather than an urban one, is just an added benefit. 

 

Other information about the RLC facility can be found at these links:

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Are You A Burning Log?

November 24th, 2008

In a recent post, I wrote about finding a way to make it easier for people in your community to start something better. That’s really what we do at the Rural Learning Center, and so do so many other organizations out there working in rural communities.

In some instances we’ve been one of those sparks for change in our own community, but many times we try to help fan the embers for others in our community who are creating change. So, instead of being the spark that starts the fire, we sometimes become the already burning log. As a great teacher once taught me, when you set another log next to one that’s been burning for a while, that new log will soon be burning fiercely of the same fire.

Could you be a burning log in your community?

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Rehab Housing in Miner County — Part 2

November 10th, 2008

The following is Part 2 in a series about the Rehab Housing program in Miner County, SD. I interviewed Tami Severson, who is the Housing Coordinator for the Rural Learning Center (RLC) in Howard. She graciously answered my questions about the RLC’s Rehab Housing Program. Further background on the program can be found in an earlier post.

 

Would you start by providing a brief overview of your rehab program?

Basically, we buy a house in need of major renovation, rehab it, and then turn around and resell it.  Sometimes we’re able to find a buyer before the construction begins, which is really helpful. 

 ’Before and After’ pictures of a Rehabbed House



How do you pick the houses you purchase?

First, we look at a house that has sat on the market for quite awhile.  Then we conduct a site survey, making sure the house is capable of being fixed up. We also put together an estimate of the work we feel needs to be done in the house.  This is probably the most important and difficult step in our decision-making process. It’s tough to get everything done the way we want and still have an affordable house. Sometimes it just can’t be done, and we don’t buy the house.

 What are the most important things you’ve learned about purchase, rehab, resell?

 How does the program help homebuyers?

Our program really takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the purchase and helps simplify the financing.  Typically, a homeowner buys the house, moves in, gets a construction loan (usually at an interest rate that is higher than their mortgage), completes the rehab, and then tries to refinance the house with these improvements.  They have to sweat out an appraisal and hope that everything goes through with their new mortgage.  With our program, the homeowner knows upfront what the house with the improvements will cost.  Then they only need to acquire one home mortgage. 

 How does the program help the community?

We’ve found that we are able to fix up homes that may not otherwise get a second chance.  That’s big because rural communities can’t afford to have very many rundown houses if they want to be an attractive place for families.

The sale of homes has improved as the job market in our community has improved.   We’ve also learned that having quality, affordable homes can meet the demand of our younger population as they settle in the area.

 Would you recommend that another rural community develop a program like this? 

I think it’s a great way for communities to fix up houses that may not otherwise get fixed up, but matching people up with the houses they want is difficult.   It’s gotten easier as the job market in Howard has improved, and it’s much nicer when a buyer can give their input into the work before construction begins It’s definitely something rural communities should consider. 

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