Congratulations, Mountain Lake!
After 18 months of planning, organizing, great conversations, and hard work, your work plan is complete! Click the link below to find details of the Horizons Team organizational plans, focus areas, and projects.
It’s finally here. I hope everyone gets out to enjoy Pow-Wow. There really is something for everyone. There are fliers up all over town, so I won’t list everything that’s happening, but here are some highlights: The Parade is Mon. at 6p, the kiddie parade is Sun. at 5p, there are free crawlers and watermelon at Eventide Suites, bingo, the carnival, the food, the Pageant, the talent show, and of course the drawings Tues. night for the grandprize of $2,000. This is our opportunity to welcome friends, family, and guests to Mt. Lake. Have a safe and happy Pow-Wow!
Everyone is welcome to attend a FREE community picnic on June 3rd at the city park, 5:30 - until the food is gone. This is in celebration of finishing our work with the Horizon program. We are by no means done with Horizons, however the partnership with Extension will be wrapping up the end of June, and Mt. Lake will be receiving the remaining $8500 from the Northwest Area Foundation at that same time.
So, what have we done? Come to the picnic to hear about what’s coming up. One outcome I will share now is that there will be FREE lunches at the school all summer for children and Horizons will provide FREE swimming passes once a week as well. Call the school for more info regarding the lunch program. 507-427-2323
I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed with your lack of response to my posts. Do you not like my prose? I would challenge anyone out there to start blogging with me. I read the O/A, I know there’s drama in Mt. Lake!! Tired of the DRAMA, write about something good that’s happening here.
On a different note, I went to the 10:45 service at Alliance today, wow, Dr. Walzack had them crying at the end, very moving.
As most of you know, we have two future squads up and running. There is an economic squad, if interested give Beth Smith or Rob Anderson a call to get on the email list for upcoming meetings. There is also a CCC - Cultural, Civic, and Community Engagement - squad. If interested in this squad please contact Tara Kleven or Gloria McKissick for more information.
We are definitely in the action phase of this program. The economic squad is working on a mini grant program for new businesses. And the CCC squad is working on having more representation from the Lao and Hispanic communities at the Heritage Fair, as well as a “Food for Thought” event at the park this summer. We are also discussing having music playing downtown everyday, and having movies in the park this summer. I have talked to Sherry P. about working together with ECI and having a children’s movie night in the park.
If you have any ideas on how to make these possible or better, please let someone know. Also, if you have an idea that is not listed here, let someone know, get involved, come to a meeting, etc….
We also have a Mt Lake blog, that is not being used. I will forward that site info, as well as some info for an upcoming free seminar.
If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Gloria is setting up a CCC meeting for the end of March, so watch for details. Thanks everyone!
This is something that we talked about starting way back when. I’m hoping that as more people begin to use the blog, that this is the right time to get started. It’s simple really…You can post things that you want to give away such as: appliances, cars, time, a talent (like hanging wallpaper), childcare, OR you can post things you’re looking for such as: a ride, childcare, clothing, a card or book club, an electrician etc…
It’s time for a Future Squad meeting!!! I have reserved the room at City Hall for next Wed. Jan 23 at 3:30. This is the Community, Cultural, and Civic Engagement Squad, and we will be primarily brainstorming ideas to engage the community and reduce poverty. As a reminder, some of the things we talked about earlier were: A community block party, community bingo, an after school program, and offering study circles again using the race curriculum. These and any other ideas are open for discussion. The idea is to get several people in the room and BRAINSTORM.
Hopefully you can make it on Wed. and please feel free to pass the word along to others that you think would be interested.
At our last meeting, we decided too not spread ourselves to thin. We are going to consolidate the Civic Engagement and Community and Cultural Engagement Future Squads into one area.
There was a lot of interest from people to participate on both Squads anyway, so hopefully this will be a good merge.
If you’d like to get involved, contact Tara @ 427-8953.
The date is Dec. 3rd from 7p-8:30p at the Community Center. Free childcare is available. You will need to contact Tara @ 427-8953 if needed.
Our meeting on the 6th went well, but we still need more people to get involved! People had a lot of great ideas, so we prioritized the top three and formed Future Squads. The areas identified were: Community and Cultural Engagement (having community block parties, working together with community Ed doing ESL, or a language exchange, a community lottery, and honest discussion about the impact of the different ethnic groups in our community) Civic Engagement-Leaders Focused on a Collective Future (The local ministerial assoc. would be actively involved in the future development and maintaining of our community, existing officials would invest in a mentoring process that develops the next generation of leaders, new elected leaders - school/city, no one runs unopposed) Economic Growth (EDA more proactive with current businesses, why don’t we have more industries? We have rail line and a major highway, new focus on our current strength of ethnic diversity as an economic assest, utilize the highway to promote Mt. Lake and bring people in, have a shop local program.
We voted on the areas we wanted to focus on, then we split into groups. We will be having a large group meeting coming up shortly. We’re waiting for Extension to set the date. I’ll keep you posted!