Mountain Lake, MN

Mountain Lake Horizons proudly co-sponsored the Child Care, Children’s HealthCoverage & Wage Issues Forum Oct. 27. The forum discussed what Minnesotais doing on family supporting wages, legislature, and election involvement.

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Other sponsors included: Child Care WORKS, Children’s Defence Fund MN, JOBS NOW Coalition,Windom Circles of Support, Windom Early Childhood Initiative,Intercultural Communities Unite (ICU), Windom Community Education, Windom Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE), BARC Education Connection, Western Community Action, Southwestern MN Opportunity Council, Mt. Lake Early Childhood Initiative, Cottonwood/Jackson County Community Health Servicesand SW CCR&R.     

 Here’s the minutes from our September Meeting. Special thanks to Gloria McKissick  for the editing. Click Here to download the minutes in Word format.     

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          Mountain Lake Horizons

          9-24-08 Meeting

          Call to Order- Beth Smith, President

          New Business:

            Motion made and seconded to accept Brian Shultz as

            a board member. Beth Smith to contact Matt Anderson

            to put Horizons messages on Channel 7. Noi Harder

            said that she can have the minutes translated  into Lao

            & Spanish.  It was suggested that  Mountain Lake

            Horizons spend up to $100 to print a directory of

            community assets.  Sherry Pankratz would have one to

            show the board by the next meeting. It was also

            suggested to see if there was another  printer besides

            Windom Quick Print.

 

         In Other Business-

            Mountain Lake is in need of welcome bags for new citizens.

           A welcoming committee consisting of representatives from the

           Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian communities would also help.

           Sherry Pankratz mentioned that the Windom ECI Family Fair

           was not asked to come to Mountain Lake. Other county agencies

           have noticed the same thing. Beth Smith suggested that we

           make it a goal to announce our next meeting in Lao and

           Spanish on Channel 7. Brian Shultz may do the announcement.

           The motion to adjourn the meeting was made by Brian Shultz,

           Gloria McKissick seconded.

 

           Our next meeting will be on Wednesday Oct. 29th at the

           Community Center.  

 

 

 

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!