Presho, SD

Blog training had some new participation. It’s good to see more people taking the time to participate and learn how to blog. Thank you to all our new bloggers!!

In what new or expanded ways are people contributing to your community? I’ve been pleased with the phone calls and comments from people in the community on the projects we’ve started and the donations, offers of volunteer work and ideas are very welcome indeed. There’s seems to be excitement about the Thrift Store and others have commented about projects that are in the works such as the bike/walking path. Now we are asking people to join us in these ventures. We will be asking groups as well as individuals to help with clean-up, painting, shelving, and more. This is a project for the people, by the people.

I would like to shout out a Thank You to all the participants who brought bars and desserts. I would like to give a special thanks to Kim Halverson who taught everybody how to blog!!!

This weekend The Presho Horizons Group is scheduling a clean up, paint, clean,dust etc. We ask that if you have a group or club that would be willing to donate there time helping out with the cleaning etc.

March Question: What additional resources would make a difference in your community’s work to reduce poverty?

Volunteers: We need a new crop of volunteers to help lead the community.

Money: We need financial resources to improve the community, roads, parks, job training, etc.

Housing: We need additional housing to bring more people to our community so we can grow and be successful.

March Question: Will you monitor and evaluate your community’s progress in reducing poverty?

The Thrift Store is going to have a discount program that allows residents to apply for a discount card that would give them a 50 % discount on merchandise. We can use these names to give us information on how many people in this community are living in poverty. We can hopefully use the skills we learned in Horizons II to help these individuals get out of povery.

In what new or expanded ways are people contributing to your community? One of the questions for the month of March. I’m glad to see new faces joining forces with the Horizons group. We need to continue to invite people to our planning sessions. Let it be known out there that Horizons will meet the 4th Monday of the month at the library. Our next upcoming meeting is Mon., Mar. 31 but will be at the High School so more people can be shown how to blog on this site. Please keep watch in the Lyman Co.Herald for more details and times.

We’ve added some new faces to the new Thrift Store board and are hoping to hear from the other committees that they’ve added some new ones, too. People probably won’t join if they aren’t invited. Let’s invite people that haven’t had the opportunity to work on community projects yet so that we can see change here in Presho. Who else can tell us of new or expanded ways people are contributing to our community?

What community resources will be needed to sustain the community plan to reduce poverty? One of our March questions that needs answering…COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS are needed to help clean and paint the inside of the building we will be renting from Chad Johnson at the N. end of main so that we can start bringing in racks and shelving that is also needed at this time. I am excited to get this project off the ground finally. Teresa has gotten a business plan put together and the board had their first official meeting. So one of the things we need to look at is the resources to get this project moving ahead. This could definitely reduce poverty when we have the opportunity to offer clothing and household goods at a greatly reduced price to local residents and, hopefully with advertising, other communities as well. Our residents are our most valuable resource we have! Money, paint, cleaning supplies, racks, shelves, counter, storage containers, etc. are small things that are needed. Once the store is open people, again, are the resource we need to frequent the Thrift store for it to thrive. There is a lot of community interest in this project and so far the Change Presho canisters have done pretty well to start with. We would like to be able to put some of this money back into the community businesses as well by purchasing the supplies we need. But most importantly, as already stated, volunteers are the most needed resource right now. We will also need volunteers to run the store once we get it off the ground. There are great, fun ways to reward these volunteers, too. Call and find out how we plan to do that!! Contact Michelle Lintvedt or Teresa Shook.

In what new or expanded ways are people contributing to your community?
The thrift store name contest got 53 entries, 40 from people that have never been involved in the Horizon II project.
2 board members of the thrift store are emerging leaders that are new to our projects.
I have received several calls about donating to the thrift store.
Area groups are wanting to volunteer time to get the store ready to open.

The Change Presho canisters have been put in local businesses. In 2 weeks we collected $79.18. Hopefully we will continue to bring in money to help with startup costs for the thrift store.