Whitewood

Posted by: Peggy Flynn

On March 20, 2008 the Whitewood Senior Citizens had their monthly potluck.  During their meeting they decided to provide a lunch for anyone that will be helping the City of Whitewood clean up group.
We hope there will be a good turn out for people to take pride in their city clean up project.  It’s a good time on May 10th to pitch in and have lunch with some of our Seniors. 

On April 12, 2008 Whitewood will be having its first Health Fair. The Health Fair will be held at Whitewood Elementary from 10am to 1pm. We are looking for volunteers to help move tables from Hale Hall and set them up at the gym in the school on Friday April 11th and will also need volunteers to help clean up and tear down after Fair on April 12th. We also need volunteers to help assist in a few of the booths at the fair. If you are interested in helping, please call Rea Weyrich at 269-2616. Your help would be GREATLY appreciated!

ATTENTION ALL WHITEWOOD RESIDENTS! WE ARE PLANNING A HORIZONS EVENT FOR THURSDAY, APRIL 10TH AT THE SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER. PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND PLAN ON ATTENDING.

You are cordially invited to attend a Horizons event planned for the evening of April 10^th at 6pm. This meeting will be held at the Senior Citizen Center. The focus of this meeting will be to establish the steps necessary to implement the goals we set in our November 2007 strategic plan. This is not an event to brainstorm new ideas, but to see our previous ideas and visions to completion. We hope this meeting will set the stage to get everyone motivated and ready to work in their committees. We will be serving Pizza and Soda to everyone that attends. We sincerely hope that you will attend as we need the support of everyone in order to accomplish our goals.

Committees and Goals

Recreation                                        Beautification Skateboard Park                              Install playground equipment at park

SD Grant Directory:

Not sure how many are aware of this site, so I thought I would pass it along…

It is a searchable database of grants available in our area, and nationwide. The database is managed by the South Dakota State Library. If looking at finding grants, you can search by specific grants, fields of interest, keywords or specific grantor. Click the picture to follow the link to the website.

Due to very popular demand, South Dakota State University’s Horizons project will host a REPEAT seminar on the steps of applying for community grants.

At the seminar, Pat Johnson and Mindy Hubert, SDSU Cooperative Extension, will walk you through the steps of applying for grants and focus on helping communities and individuals develop the skills needed to successfully write and receive a grant for community development.

The Northwest Area Foundation in St. Paul, Minn., funds the Horizons project, which is a 20-month grant project, aimed at reducing poverty and building leadership in rural communities.

The free seminar starts at 1:00 p.m. and concludes at 3:00 pm. The seminar will be held on Tuesday,  ^{April 1st}  at the West River Ag Center located at 1905 Plaza Blvd in Rapid City, SD.

Registration is required. Call Carolyn Hendricks, 605-347-2436 or email her at carolyn.hendricks@ces.sdstate.edu to register. Participants are asked to register by March 28th since space may be limited.

For ALL Horizons communities: It will be up to your community to decide what happens with your community blogs in the future. Some communities may see the value of continuing the blogs after Horizons is officially completed this summer. We also realize that some community blogs may choose to end when Horizons ends.  NWAF has told us that the blogs will be active for as long as your community wishes to use them.

Some benefits of community blogging include: 

·          A place to share ideas in your community.

·         Open forum for discussion/decision making.

·         Interactive way to measure your progress on projects.

·         Marketing tool to attract new residents, potential project funders, positive press from local news outlets, etc.

·         A way to stay accountable/build momentum/gather volunteers and resources for planned projects, dreams and goals.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

For more info on the poll go to: http://www.vizu.com/res/Grab-bag/blog/poll-results.html?n=83343&cId=0

Here it is…….. Working together for Whitewood!  The Whitewood Horizons Strategic Planning team will work together toward goals for making Whitewood the best place it can be.  We will invite people to work together to improve our community.   We will focus on the appearance and renewed success of Whitewood.

So, how are we doing with our mission statement and vision?

I thought it had been enough time that I haven’t seen what the mission statment was. I am hoping other people haven’t g;lanced at it for a while so here is a little reminder…….

Whitewood will be a friendly, progressive community where people care about each other and work together toward common goals.  Whitewood will be a place where history and the future come together. We treasure our past, but we look to tomorrow by welcoming new residents, businesses, and visitors. Whitewood will be a place where our youth are valued. It will be a community for young and old, a place where people can spend their entire lives. Whitewood will be a clean and safe place to live. We are committed to being a community that includes those living in the city limits, in neighboring developments, and in the country.

 Check this out! I just had this list forwarded from Carolyn. At our last meeting in Whitewood Julian said this seminar was really helpful.  I have added a link to this page. Please look to the right under pages

On Thursday March 6th Rea Weyrich, Amy Barker, Jackie Hoffman, and I all went to Newell to a Economic Development meeting for Horizons. We listened to two speakers on Economic Development. The first speaker was Marty Beutler and he gave an interesting speech on the County Economic Model for Butte County. He broke down various parts of the county by population, household types, commuting patterns, etc…. His speech was very interesting and he will be compiling data to share in this same regard for Lawrence county as well.

The second speaker was Jim Mirehouse, CEO of Genesis Equity Fund.  Jim said economic development was a process that begins when a community acts to make itself ready to accommodate the retention, startup, location, or expansion of an enterprise. Economic Development occurs when a local economy is vitalized by the creation of one or more jobs, an increase in community wealth, or the useful distribution of capital that arrives from outside sources. The process of economic development never ends during the life of a community. Currently, Jim works with up and coming technology companies that work out of the incubator at the School of Mines. These technology businesses stay in the incubator for up to 5 years and after that time, these businesses must move out on their own. He explained that communities should capitalize on this and try to capture some of this up and coming business.  He stressed that communities need to have specific goals and should look for opportunities to capture full time quality jobs in our community. Jim’s ideas were great and I believe our community should look into some of these businesses that are currently in the incubator and see if any of them would be a fit for our community.

March 17th is the annual PTO Tator and Toppings dinner. It will be at Hale Hall from 5-7 pm. All proceeds go to the PTO. The dinnder includes a baked potato with lots of choices for toppings and a brownie delight. I can’t wait!!!

Also since I went to the city council meeting inviting them to the potato feed I think it is only fair to let you all know there is a city council meeting that night at City Hall at 7pm.

Sunday March 9th is the monthly Horizons meeting. We welcome anyone with an interest in Horizons and seeing positive change in our community attend. The meeting is held at the public library at 6pm. Items on the agenda are below:

Items on the Agenda:

New seminar opportunities

New Finding found at seminars:

·         Housing seminar – Julian and Fritz

·         Entrepreneurship Conf in Mitchell – Rea

·         Economic/Entrepreneurship in Newell – Tammy, Millie, Rea, Mary L, Jackie, Mary B.  and others

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Reports:

·         Economic

·         Beautification/ Parks/ Youth

·         Health Fair

·         Communication -   with Black Hills Pioneer

·         Other

Additions to the agenda always welcome.   

Tonight Amy Barker my fellow blogger and PTO president made a presentation to the City Council. On St. Patricks day which is on March 17th the PTO is sponsoring a town wide Potatoe Feed! There will be a free will donation at the door and the proceeds from the event will go to the school beautification project! Amy went to the council meeting to give personal invitations to the council for the Potatoe Feed. Amy gave each of them a potatoe with a note stuck in it reminding them of the date etc…. She also kindly reminded the council that the potatoe feed is for the KIDS so please come! The council members were very receptive to the idea and said they would be there! Coincidently the next council meeting also falls on                    March 17th and since the City Hall is across the street from Hale Hall where the Potatoe feed will be there should be no excuses. Here are a few pictures taken tonight at city hall! Enjoy!

My doctor said he saw a story on KOTA TV about our Horizons group and here it is….

Local group helps town grow

Makenzi Henderson

In November Whitewood’s Strategic Plan was laid out, and now committees are grouping up again and it’s time to see the plans through! If you are interested in being on a committee to help with these projects then we would love to have your help! We will take any help we can get no matter how big or small.

Some of the committee’s that we have are:

Economic Development

Community Development

Communications

Beautification

Recreation

Please let us know if you are interested in working on any of these committees. We will have our next group meeting on the second Sunday in March. We would love to see more faces in attendance. The meeting will be held at 6pm at the Whitewood library!

On Friday February 15th the student council sponsored a Valentine dance at the school. Not only was there dancing with a DJ, but there was also BINGO and face painting for the kids. There were about 50 kids at the dance and everyone seemed to have a really good time. The kids really loved the face painting, so Katie and Cory Heckenlaible stayed busy all night painting faces.

There was even some fun on the dance floor when our police Chief Jerry Davidson was doing the YMCA with several of the kids. Several of the kids even danced to the Macarana and the Chicken Dance too!

The student council sponsored this event. They asked for a $1 donation at the door and the proceeds from the event will go towards the school beautification project. Thank you student council for sponsoring this event. Everyone had a great time!

Answered by Del Zambon

The questions for Feb are specific and tough.  From where I sit I do not see much happening.  As I mentioned earlier, A good tool to get the poorer people involved is the newspaper “Whitewood Edition”.  Could we list such things as Birthdays?  Or, stories about Whitewood businesses and especially their Employes (The trailer business employes around 50 people).  Or, the log home builders-what are they doing specifically.  Get some meat in the Whitewood edition with pictures and names (not the names of the same bunch).

What about getting our Representative to visit on her next annual visit?

What about mailing the Whitewood Edition to the local ranchers? 

The chili cookoff was a great success.  Whitewood did get some of the less fortunate to attend.  However, discussions at church indicated that not all were informed and they missed the feed.  I really liked the multitude of prizes given out.

I really like the Spring town wide cleanup.  But I am at a loss as to how you get the general population excited and involved.  What about giving the boyscouts, girlscouts, church congregations, clubs etc $50 for each pickup load with extra for tires, appliances, concrete etc.

I would like to start with wow what a great wrestling tournament yesterday. We have alot of people at our tournament and we had alot of great help. Thank you to all of the ones who came and helped us out with big day. It was alot of fun working with you all. Hope we get a great group of people next year like we did this year. I also want to say thank you to April, Howdy and Sue for the support for our concession.

Yes it is finally cookie time for Girl Scouts. We will start selling door to door on the 22nd of this month. We do have a new cookie also very exciting.  I am happy to say we actually have a large amount of girls in our two Whitewood troops for the small town that we have, it is a nice way for the girls to learn and meet new people.  Troop 72291 we will meet this Sunday the 17th at 4pm at the Whitewood Library. I would like to thank Reah for letting us hold our monthly meetings there. If there is anyone interested in Girl Scouts you can contact Mona Smith.

Was last night at the library at 6pm. We had about 8 people in attendance. We would have liked to have seen more people at the meeting, however the weather was cold and the roads were icy, so it was understandable. We discussed a variety of different things at the meeting and gave Carolyn an update of what we have been doing. The next step now is moving to the action stage! We need to begin to work towards our objectives that were layed down in our strategic plan goals. We are in the process of contacting all the different people that expressed an interest to be on the committees in the past, so we can begin to get to work. If you are interested in helping on any committee in any way please contact Rea Weyrich and she will get you on the list! If you have any questions you can email the blog at whitewoodblogger@yahoo.com or you can also post a comment right here under this post on the blog!

Our next meeting is March 9th at 6pm at the Whitewood Library. If anyone is interested in the minutes of our meeting I’d be happy to email them to you.

Category 6: Building skills and mobilizing around leadership

In what ways have leadership skills been improved/enhanced?  What is different? To me it seems that leadership skills have been improved greatly since Horizons came into the picture. Many more people are getting involved in community activities and everyone seems to have the same goal in mind, which is to see our little town thriving. I think more people that did not think of themselves as leaders have stepped up and are being looked at by others as leaders. I think there has always been cooperation and working together in the town, but it is definetly different and enhanced since working with Horizons. We also have more coverage in the Newspaper as well too. The Pioneer features Whitewood every Wednesday where we have or own section, and we also get a Whitewood section in the Lawrence County Journal every other Saturday. It’s been great forwarding pictures to the newspaper to get some of our stories featured.

Category 10: Building skills and mobilizing around community

Is your community more hopeful about the future?  How do you know? I think our community is more hopeful about the future! I think this is evident in the way that our community shows support in the various activities that go on in town. We have a lot of involvement in community activities. For instance the Christmas Parade of Lights was fabulous this year and we had more community support and more floats were entered in the contest this year as well. I see more involvement from individuals that were not previously involved too. People in town are excited and the more they see positive change happening the more hopeful they will become!

Friday, January 04, 2008 Horizons Project Promotes Community Blogging Blogging is about conversations. So is community development. So maybe community development could be about blogging… I thought I had a totally new dissertation idea there. Then I found out the smart folks at the SDSU Cooperative Extension Service have already beaten

Friday, January 04, 2008

Horizons Project Promotes Community Blogging

Blogging is about conversations. So is community development. So maybe community development could be about blogging…

I thought I had a totally new dissertation idea there. Then I found out the smart folks at the SDSU Cooperative Extension Service have already beaten me to it. As part of the Horizons project, they have 21 South Dakota communities blogging:

I’ve added the list to the right sidebar as well. Take a look — there are a lot of interesting projects going on. (Gotta have data — check out the Bison demographics page!) The blogs serve a practical purpose as a convenient place for each town’s committee to archive their Horizons mission statements and other documents that the project might require. The communities can document their progress as they undertake projects to “increase leadership and decrease poverty.”

A quick survey shows that five of the participating towns — Armour, Murdo, Newell, Philip, and Whitewood 434 — have discovered the joy of hit counters. Whitewood is ahead, with 434 hits (not to mention a good spread of posts!), with Newell and Armour coming on strong. (Beware the SiteMeter, kids! Numbers can be addicting!)

There is also a state Horizons site coordinating the community blog efforts. On the humorous side, the latest post there has some priceless blog advice on not overusing the new text color shortcut (”don’t go crazy here–remember sometimes less is more!”).

I’m intrigued. Folks blogging not for polemics or imagined fame, but to share information with neighbors and promote the common good. Maybe these community blogs can draw out some ideas and plans that might not jump out under everyone’s gaze at a public meeting. Maybe blogs really can do some good, not just for geeky technophiles, but for every South Dakotan.

There may be a dissertation in there yet. I look forward to hearing from participants (including my friends in Montrose — keep on blogging!) about how community blogging helps them carry out their Horizons project goals.

Posted by caheidelberger at 22:33  

Labels: economic developmentme to it. As part of the Horizons project, they have 21 South Dakota communities blogging: SD Horizons Community Blogs Armour Bison Conde Estelline Faith Frederick Hot Springs Iroquois Montrose Murdo Newell Oldham Philip Presho Sanborn Central Scotland Sisseton Tripp Tyndall Wagner Whitewood I’ve added the list to the right sidebar as well. Take a look — there are a lot of interesting projects going on. (Gotta have data — check out the Bison demographics page!) The blogs serve a practical purpose as a convenient place for each town’s committee to archive their Horizons mission statements and other documents that the project might require. The communities can document their progress as they undertake projects to “increase leadership and decrease poverty.” A quick survey shows that five of the participating towns — Armour, Murdo, Newell, Philip, and Whitewood 434 — have discovered the joy of hit counters. Whitewood is ahead, with 434 hits (not to mention a good spread of posts!), with Newell and Armour coming on strong. (Beware the SiteMeter, kids! Numbers can be addicting!) There is also a state Horizons site coordinating the community blog efforts. On the humorous side, the latest post there has some priceless blog advice on not overusing the new text color shortcut (”don’t go crazy here–remember sometimes less is more!”). I’m intrigued. Folks blogging not for polemics or imagined fame, but to share information with neighbors and promote the common good. Maybe these community blogs can draw out some ideas and plans that might not jump out under everyone’s gaze at a public meeting. Maybe blogs really can do some good, not just for geeky technophiles, but for every South Dakotan. There may be a dissertation in there yet. I look forward to hearing from participants (including my friends in Montrose — keep on blogging!) about how community blogging helps them carry out their Horizons project goals. Posted by caheidelberger at 22:33 Labels: economic development

Post from Mary Livingston she couldn’t get on blog this morning:

At Leadership Plenty there was some discussion about preserving the history of Whitewood.      How important it was to find old pictures and documents before they are lost forever.     Rea and Donna have been working like crazy on this at the library.   They purchased archival safe materials to store photos and print material.  The Genie Club has given hours of help in sorting and categorizing the library collection and getting things ready for any new material that might be donated.       Now they get their rewards.      Montana-Dakota Utilities has given Whitewood a grant of $1,000.     The City Council voted to put the money into a fund for the library to digitize their collection.   This way any one wanting to look at the collection can view it on a computer and save handling the originals.       It is an expensive process but it will ensure that Whitewood’s history  — at least what is documented  — will be around a long time.      Stop by the library and talk to Rea about this Horizon project.

The Chamber is having their fifth annual Chili Cook-off February 9th at Hale Hall. The Chili feed is open to the public at noon and goes until 2 pm. There will be prizes awarded. Teams are welcome and they can decorate their tables.  The Horseshoe 4-H club is selling bottled water and the 8-10 club is serving ice cream. Donations are accepted at the door. Contestants who are interested should contact City Hall at 269-2247 they are asking you register byFebruary 4th.

Whitewood Health Fair Planning Meeting  28 January 2008   6:00pm

Those interested in helping to plan a health fair for our community please come or call Rea Weyrich at 269-2616.

Carolyn our fearless leader helping us facilitate our meeting!!

Last night Sunday January 20th we had our first implementation meeting for our strategic plan. The meeting was held at 6pm at the library. The weather was awful and it had been snowing in Whitewood all day. Although, we had a very slim group we did have some good discussions about our future plans and goals, and what we needed to do to go forward.

We have set the monthly meetings to be held on the 2nd Sunday of every month. The meetings will be held at the library at 6pm. We encourage everyone that wants to be involved in seeing positive changes happen for Whitewood attend these meetings. I’m sure that we have a committee that is right for you! Some of the committees are: communication, economic development, recreation, and more. If you are interested in getting involved please post a comment here or contact one of the steering committee members: Rea Weyrich, Lynn Hill, Marty O’Dea, or Ryan Bush.

We are also wanting others to get involved in the blog! We need more people to post comments and also to post their ideas and opinions. We are on track for the highest prize in our community which is the laptop and the printer, but in order to continue towards this goal we need the help of the people. If you are interested in learning how to blog, please let me know by posting a comment here and I’ll help you. Or if you have already had blog training and you need a refresher class please let us know and Amy and I will be happy to have another class to help everyone out. Please let us know.

Now we need to get to work on our various committees and see that the goals that were previously set up are achieved. The various committees need to set up meetings to discuss the progress of their goals and what needs to be done to acheive them. Each group needs to report back to Carolyn on their progress and what was discussed. So let’s not wait to start working, lets start working now and see some real positive change for Whitewood!

On Sunday January 20th at 6pm a meeting is scheduled at the library. We are asking that all members from the steering committees, strategic planning committees, other committees, and anyone who wants to get involved attend. During this meeting we will discuss our goals from Community Strategic plans, and we will begin to work on these goals and see that they are achieved. We are going to need the support of the community in order to get these goals achieved. Please plan on attending this meeting as the more brains and ideas that we have to share information with the better!!

Yesterday, we received a blog progress report from Cheryl with Horizons. As a community so far we are doing really good and are currently on track for the highest reward a laptop computer for our community! Yeah for us! But there are some things that we need to work on to ensure that we receive this reward. Below are some comments and suggestions that Cheryl had for us:

Whitewood is on track for earning the highest incentive level: Shoot for the Stars. My only suggestion is to work on adding new users and getting more current users active in creating their own posts. While Tammy is a WONDERFUL blogger, this needs to be a community wide project, so the more active bloggers the better. Also we would like to see more Horizons specific work highlighted on the blog. But overall, a great job.  You must continue this progress through the end of the project to be eligible to earn your chosen incentive level.  

This information is accurate as of January 15, 2008. If you have questions or concerns, or believe that we haven’t credited you for work completed, please let us know. This report is meant to be a guide for you and your community coordinator.

The suggestions that Cheryl gave us for our community are totally DOABLE!! I know that if we all work together we can achieve this goal. If you are not a current blogger and you would like to be there are instructions on the right side of the tool bar that can assist you. You can also email me and I’d be happy to help you get started!! We need posts about Horizon specific activities, but we also can use posts of activities and happenings that are going on in town. We can do this! If there are any questions please email me at whitewoodblogger@yahoo.com.