Minnesota

Horizons II communities successfully completed the 18-month program and Horizons staff  want to share two documents developed that highlight the many successes the communities accomplished.  The first is a report on activities around the three outcome areas of Horizons - leadership development, poverty reduction, and community/partnership/infrastructure development.  You can access this report by clicking on:  Action on Horizons Outcomes 

The second document highlight the findings from the pre and post test done in the communities during the study circle and LeadershipPlenty components of the program.  You can access this report by going to Community Evaluation Results of Pre and Post Tests

 Amazing work by amazing people that reinforces our belief that Minnesota is the best place to live!

The Center provides all kinds of information on rural development.  They include sections on community development, tourism, acquiring resources, just to name a few.  They also have an “ask a question” component where a reference librarian will respond to your specific question.  Very cool!

Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network mission is “building rural assets to build rural livilihoods”

They provide books and step-by-step guides for rural communities to build endowments and community foundations. 

It is supported by the Aspen Institute - Community Strategies Group.

Check it out!

You can access Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunities website to learn about national trends, projects, and political activities surrounding poverty.  It provides a glimpse on how everyone around the country is trying to address the impacts of poverty on individuals and communities.  Check it out!

Please click on the Family: Understanding Youth resource page to access all kinds of publications and tools for adults who want to learn more about speaking with youth on a variety of topics.  The resources are put together from Extension’s Center for Youth Development.  A sample of topics includes:

• fun activities for youth all of ages
• positive parenting
• understanding peer pressure
• building resilency for youth to make good choices regarding drugs and drinking

How to plan and build sustainable affordable housing and communities in Minnesota. 

Minnesota Green Communities is a statewide collaboration of the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, the Family Housing Fund, and Enterprise. The National Green Communities initiative is a five-year commitment by Enterprise to build more than 8,500 healthy, efficient homes for low-income people and make sustainable development the mainstream in the affordable housing industry.

They are having a statewide conference on May 21-22.  There’s a link below were you can access their conference website.

Featuring keynote speakers: Mark Fenton and Van Jones.

Both days include expert workshops and a luncheon keynote address on a wide array of affordable, sustainable development topics, including residential green building, Minnesota Housing funding requirements, energy conservation and climate protection strategies, equitable green economic development, and healthy homes and communities.

 http://www.mngreencommunities.org/gbd/index.htm 

The following are resources forwarded by Deborah Moore,  Associate Director of the MN Youth Work Institute:

• “Creating Youth-Adult Partnerships” from the Innovation Center.  They can be downloaded or ordered on line at  www.innovationcenter.org
• “Building Community” from the Innovation Center.  They can also be downloaded or ordered on line at  www.innovationcenter.org
• “15 Points – Successfully Involving Youth in Decision-Making”  Youth on Board.  Can be found at www.youthonboard.org

This approach focuses on learning about and understanding all the assets that are available in a community. Assets can include people, skills, buildings, nature (like parks and rivers), etc. If a community can identify all the assets in the community, those assets can be used to help people in need.

Here are examples of what is happening in some communities:

• a program to help people buy and repair their own cars (assets identified to make this happen included a retired mechanic and an unused car garage)
• starting a “buy local” program or campaign
• pooling financial resources to create a “lending circle” program to help people get credit to start a business of their own (assets identified include people with business start-up experience and people who have ideas and interest in starting a business)

We’ve already seen some of these ideas listed in some community plans in Minnesota and we look forward to adding other ideas to the list!

As always, if you’d like additional information on all the approaches, please log on to Everyday Democracy’s (formerly Study Circle Resource Center) website at

http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/index.aspx

and click on the poverty link under issues on the right hand side. From there you’ll see the link to the “Thriving Communities: Working Together to Move From Poverty to Prosperity for All” guide.

The Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) commissioned Lake Research Partners (LRP) to conduct a national tracking survey to explore the public’s perception of poverty in one’s own community, attitudes toward the roles of local elected officials, and ways in which to address the issue. The survey was conducted among 4,000 Americans age 18 and older, from February 8-29, 2008. Eight hundred interviews were conducted nationally, and oversamples of 400 were conducted in each of the following eight states: Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The oversamples were weighted down to reflect their true proportion in the country. The margin of error is +/-3.5 percentage points for national and +/-5.0 points for state results. This is the third survey of its kind, replicating studies NWAF and LRP released in March 2006[1] and April 2007.

There are three documents that cover Minnesota responses:

Results from a National Survey 

A Briefing Paper for Minnesota Policymakers 

Detailed Minnesota Results with Survey Questions 

Are you trying to determine whether a proposed business is right for your community? . The Wage & Benefits Metric is designed to help local decision makers measure just what kind of jobs this new business would bring into the local economy: living wage, minimum wage, full- or part-time, with benefits or without.   It is a free, web-based easy-to-use tool and you can access it at:

http://jobmetric.nwaf.org/