Bowdon, ND

Community Commentators
Bowdon’s Community Visioning process, the fourth step in the Horizons Program, which is sponsored by the Northwest Area Foundation, got off to a great start when participants were greeted by the usual North Dakota spread of good food when they walked into the Bowdon Auditorium on a recent Sunday evening.  Thirty-five people gathered to make comments on nine different categories that were an outgrowth of the paper survey that was sent to 220 households in the Bowdon-Heaton-Chaseley community.  From the 78 responses to the paper survey, the Group Decision Center  from NDSU created an interactive program to gather opinions, solutions, volunteers and more from the highly motivated, community-oriented participants. Laughter, a little frustration from the new-to-computers-crowd, and energy emanated around the room as we used the 35 laptops to answer questions, make comments, and make comments on others’ comments in the pursuit of a vision for our community.

At the completion of the evening, the Bowdon Horizons Steering Committee was given a complete overview of what our community views as important and actionable issues, along with practical solutions and ideas. In addition, many people volunteered to particpate in the implementation of the actions needed to realize the community’s vision.

In a meeting that followed soon after the Group Decision Center night, the Steering Committee and a few other volunteers met to distill the process into measureable goals with doable action steps. Those goals and actions are posted on the blog site. Just look in the column on the right hand side of the page to see them all.

Ready! Set! Go! Bowdon!

Recently, Patti Patrie and Laurel Jones attended a conference/workshop in Mandan, ND, under the auspices of Headstart that addressed the issues of poverty and moving from one economic level to another.

The workshop instructor, Monica Bein, mbein@tulsa-health.org from Oklahoma gave participants many personal anecdotes that illustrated the need to identify the “hidden rules” in any organization or group and to find ways to make experiences in accessing information and services user friendly.

Patti and Laurel purchased some books that are available at the Community Library and also received a workbook to accompany the books.

In the planning are workshops for the community to apply what Patti, Laurel, and Laurene Heintz–who attended an earlier conference on the same topic–have learned.