Greenfield, IA

A presentation from DHS to the Food for All work group created awareness that only about 50% of the people eligible for the Food Assistance program in Adair Co. were using it.   The work group decided to sponsor a community presentation about the program on 5/29/08.  Present at that workshop were representatives of the two food pantries in Greenfield - the Methodist Church and Matura Community Action - Neighborhood Center.  The Superintendant of Nodaway Valley Schools we also present.   As a result of the information presented, the two food pantries are now distributing information on how to apply for the Food Assistance Program.  The presentation also made those present aware that any families receiving free lunches at school, would also qualify for the Food Assistance Program since income guidelines are the same.  The Nodaway Valley  School will now distribute Food Assistance information with the applications for Free and Reduced Lunches. 

Congratulations Ben Baudler and Kelsie Cass on being selecting Herbert Hoover Uncommon Students. Only 15 Iowa students are awarded this designation each year and the 2008 class includes two of our Horzions participants. They both participated in study circles and the LeadershipPlenty® classes. Cass is also a member of the steering committee.
Each Uncommon Student had to identify a project they will complete this year. Both of them selected projects related to priorities identified by the Greenfield Horizons project. Ben will be writing a series of preschool books around the theme, Nodaway Valley: A Great Place to Live and Grow. (quality early child care and education). Kelsie will be conducting cooking classes (Cooking for Life) for parents with young children as part of her work in the area of Food for All.
Our community should be really proud of these young leaders.

One of the first tasks completed after our Action Forum was the creation of a community directory. Many directories have been distributed, but that doesn’t substitute for actually connecting with some of the service providers. During the Horizons Community Celebration a number of programs set up tables and visited with community members attending the supper. Public health, the Neighborhood Center (fuel assistance, food pantry), Child Care Resource and Referral, Social Security, Master Gardener, Methodist Church Food Pantry, local banks, and Henry A Wallace Country Life Center all had someone there to visit with people. Of course, copies of the resource directory were available, too.

The Adair County Hot Shots 4-H club and Growing Strong Families program had kids activities which were very popular. All segments of the community were represented in the approximate 175 attendance. Families with young children, teens, business community members, religious leaders, elderly, and residents with disabilities.

The Food for All Task Force established the celebration as a drop off point for food or cash to support local food pantries. 105.85 in cash was collected along with approximately 200 food items. These items help stock nearly empty shelves at the two local food pantries.

At last the idea of a cooking class featuring nutrition information and low-cost recipes for families with young children has started. On Sunday June 29th, 11 people met for the first workshop in the Cooking For Life series. There were six participants and five mentors.

The food group feature for the day was calcium so we did an activity to improve label reading skills and think about where you can get calcium.

The main course was Mexican Mess, a type of Mexican lasagna. It includes cheese, a calcium rich food. We didn’t eat the food on site, because the idea was to take it home for supper. One of the participants already reported she served it for supper and her family loved it!

We prepared home-made pudding. It was cool because everyone learned it was easy to do, a lot cheaper than the little prepared packs and a better source of calcium.

4-H’ers volunteered to watch the kids while the adults cooked. They had fun coloring and playing with playdoh.

At the end of the session all of the participants received a set of Pyrex dishes, all of the ingredients in the meals, bags to put them in, and two cans of green beans to cook at home.

I think everyone had a great time for the first session and learned a lot. They identified they would like to learn to make ham Balls or meat loaf, cheesy macaroni corn, and apple crisp at the July session.

There is a lot of support from the community. The Adair County 4-H Youth Council, Nodaway Valley Market, Fareway, Pamida, Thrivent, Summerset Citizens, and Empowerment have all given cash resources for this project.

Hopefully there will be a number of benefits to this project. Goals of the projects are to build a strong community support system for young families and provide an opportunity for young families to develop new skills in cooking, organization, planning, and budgeting.

A new model for parent education is emerging since the Horizons Study Circles. When a grant for Community Partnership for Protecting Children was written to Prevent Child Abuse Iowa, several key questions from Study Circles were considered. How are parents involved in the decision-making and program implementation? What barriers need to be addressed so parents can participate?
The Great Beginnings curriculum, a 5-session program, was selected to receive a grant of approximately $3000. Parents were invited to participate in the facilitator training. There was a special effort to engage low-resource parents. Child care was provided so they could attend the training. As a result, ISU Extension Families Specialist and the Growing Strong Families parent educator have teamed up with two different parents to offer the series twice within the community. Both the parents and the parent educator are paid for their facilitation services from grant funds. The grant also provided funds for child care at each session and a light meal.  Several organizations also provided resources to the program including FACT Empowerment and Family Rewards.
Recently one of the parents serving as a facilitator shared her personal story with the State Empowerment Board. She talked about moving to the community, working to blend families, and meeting the parent educator at a WIC clinic. It was obvious how her confidence had grown and how empowering it was for her to be asked to become involved as a facilitator. Since she got involved in a leadership role, she has also accepted employment at a local business and already has received a promotion.
Getting professionals to think about assets of families and involving the people they serve in leadership roles can have a huge impact on both individuals and the community. This is just an example of how thinking differently about how to deliver a service can have a big pay-off.

Horizons member Joan F. hadn’t ever addressed a body of elected officials before, but her points were clear and convincing as she spoke about the need for high quality early childhood education at the Nodaway Valley School Board meeting. She referred back to what she learned in the study circles and talked about the priority of quality learning environments for our young children from the visioning process. She helped school board members see the clear connection between providing high quality preschool and poverty reduction. It was obvious what she said came from her heart, but was based on strong facts.

The school board meeting presentation came after months of hard work. Joan and several other members of the quality child care and education group participated in a process to explore the possibility of the school district applying for Voluntary Preschool funding. The school board moved to pursue the funding opportunity. The Horizons co-chairs of the quality early childhood education and care work group wrote a letter of support for the grant application, another first.

The community won’t hear whether or not we’re selected to be a Voluntary Preschool site until June 9th, but no matter what the outcome the process was heavily influenced by work conducted as part of Horizons. Some examples follow:

1. People most impacted by the decision, young families, were well represented on the exploratory committee. There was a conscious effort to engage parents from all income levels. The committee make-up and approach empowered young families to get involved.

2. Barriers to participation often faced by young families with limited incomes and support systems were removed. Meetings were held in the early evening. Free child care was provided and used.

3. Data from the Horizons visioning process was used in the process along with short easy to read research articles about the long-term impact of quality preschool.

4. There was open discussion about current practice of “labeling” low-income children and their families by placing them in “special program.”

5. Community informational meetings for parents with young children were held after the decision to apply for the grant was made to gather additional data and answer questions. Free child care was provided.

An agreement was made with the existing state funded preschool serving low-income children that will allow children to be placed in any classroom that meets quality standards, in the event the proposal is funded. This new practice will remove the stigma of being placed in a “low-income” program and allow the integration of children of all income levels to participate together in rich learning activities.

The Nodaway Valley Middle School students held the second annual Join Hands Day on Wednesday May 21^st, 2008.  All middle school students, and staff, along with community members worked together to complete projects in the community. Both years, the students have selected to do a Food for All project. I along with student representatives and community members planned a project related to the issue of food and poverty in our community.  We came up with hosting a bake sale at the Fontanelle Community Center where all proceeds of the bake sale will be donated to the local food pantries.   We also decided to add an interesting twist to the project.  Instead of paying for items like you do at a regular bake sale, you would purchase your baked goods by donating a canned food item.

At a presentation the day before to the Chamber, members donated $113 to assist the food pantries. In addition, Bon’s Bake House owner went back and made bars for the bake sale as did another Chamber member. A number of teachers and students also baked along with some community members. It was exciting to see individuals who haven’t been involved with any of the Food for Everyone projects get involved. I am realizing the power of asking for help.  It might be only 3-4 people that volunteer, but a few people can make a big difference.

Ten middle school members and one adult stayed at the middle school and collected items from the middle school food drive.  They counted the items and divided them between the two food pantries.  Once they inventoried the items, they identified food groups were more items were needed. They went to the grocery store and learned how to manage their money wisely by purchasing $52.00 worth of items to add to the donations. 

Meanwhile at the Community Center ten project members worked at a bake sale.  The students raised a total of $372.43 and collected 49 canned goods as part of the bake sale.  We added this to the number of food items that were collected at the middle school and got a total of 263 items donated.  The cash will be used to buy meat certificates for the Food Pantries.

 The day was extremely successful and I believe students learned a lot about the spirit of giving and the importance of community involvement.  Hopefully every student left that day with a sense of accomplishment and pride in what they did.  I know that I was very proud of them. 

The two new providers in the area are continuing to offer services to more families whose children need care. The Horizons Child Care group kept the YMCA informed of grant opportunities and actually got them technical assistance to write grants. They succeeded by securing grant dollars to purchase new equipment for the child care center. One of their first purchases was toddler-sized tables and chairs in order to let toddlers eat at their own level and be comfortable. The child care group is planning to continue to keep an eye out for funding, professional development, and other opportunities to help ensure the child care centers around are offering the best services available.

A new Family Rewards center has opened up for families with children up to 18 months. The purpose is to reward families with points towards supplies (diapers to feeding supplies to toys and strollers) for doing things like attending parenting classes, going to child’s well-baby visits, and adopting healthy behaviors such as quit smoking or completing high school. Horizons participant Tracey Mavis is the director of the brand new program and is using the connections she developed as part of Horizons to help connect families with support systems in the community.

The Horizons Quality child care group is a leader in helping exploring Voluntary preschool in our school district. Nina Utterback, Maureen Lonsdale, Joanie Finck, Angie Powell, and Janelle Kralik are taking an active role in helping the Nodaway Valley school district explore options and ideas for a possible 4-year old voluntary preschool program. They are partnering with school officials, preschool programs, and young families to identify the characteristics of quality preschools and consider ways to enhance preschool education within the community. During the first session it was exciting to see we had great agreement about what quality involves. The challenge now is to figure out how the community can work together to make sure we provide the best preschool education in possible for our children.

Connecting people with resources continues to be one of the goals of our horizons project, but sometimes no resources exist, especially in the case of an emergency. Emergency financial assistance is now available for not only 0-5 year olds, but also 6-18 year olds through funding from the Creston Cluster Decat project. After hearing about the situations of several families with 0-5 year olds who took advantages of the emergency fund to meet some very basic needs, it feels even better to know that more kids can be helped now. Elementary students, middle schoolers, and high schoolers whose families are struggling with medical bills, aren’t getting mental health help because of costs or know that their student is struggling with school because they need glasses but can’t afford them will be able to seek help out solutions through the newly expanded Emergency fund.