Final Presentation GrandIsland

Tristan Powell Author

08/23/2019 Added

0 Plays

Description

Fellows Final Presentation GrandIsland

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:02.540]My name is Alyssa Ehler, I'm a senior
[00:00:04.990]Political Science and Agricultural Economics double major,
[00:00:08.510]with minors in Leadership, Entrepreneurship,
[00:00:10.310]and Global Agriculture.
[00:00:12.010]My name is Angela Beltran, and I am
[00:00:13.920]an incoming sophomore this year,
[00:00:15.830]studying International Business.
[00:00:16.990]I am also Pre-Law.
[00:00:18.310]I am from Columbus.
[00:00:20.210]So as they said, we had the privilege
[00:00:22.300]to work in two different towns this year.
[00:00:26.540]So we spent the first seven weeks of our summer
[00:00:31.544]in Grand Island, Nebraska, and then we were like,
[00:00:33.817]"You know what?
[00:00:34.650]"We finished everything we need to do."
[00:00:35.906]That's gonna end here. So we got
[00:00:37.215]to go and hook up with the team
[00:00:40.080]in Broken Bow, Custer County,
[00:00:42.130]and we spent our last three weeks there.
[00:00:45.470]So I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of preview
[00:00:49.950]the projects that we worked on in Grand Island.
[00:00:53.220]So we accomplished a lot of work,
[00:00:57.000]of just sort of starting to connect
[00:01:00.510]between the Latino business owners,
[00:01:03.460]and the Anglo business owners community.
[00:01:05.070]So the program we worked with was
[00:01:07.407]UNL Extension's Latino Small Business Program.
[00:01:10.560]It was part of the Community Vitality Initiative,
[00:01:12.490]and it's really focused on equipping
[00:01:15.230]Latino small business owners across the state
[00:01:19.387]to be able to have the resources to access
[00:01:21.730]legal counseling, technical counseling,
[00:01:24.650]kinda be able to walk people start-to-finish
[00:01:27.190]on how to start a business,
[00:01:28.480]and also to provide education and training
[00:01:30.690]to business owners as they go throughout their,
[00:01:33.210]the life of their business.
[00:01:34.370]So it's really, it goes from one-on-one counseling,
[00:01:37.510]to meetings, to trainings, to mentorship.
[00:01:41.180]And so one thing that we wanted to do is,
[00:01:44.610]Grand Island, sort of like Omaha,
[00:01:46.350]definitely has its pockets of diversity.
[00:01:49.090]And Grand Island's area of its heaviest diversity
[00:01:52.300]is on Fourth Street.
[00:01:53.793]It is approximately a quarter Latino population
[00:01:58.790]in Grand Island now.
[00:02:00.190]And so we wanted to be able to really bring
[00:02:02.640]Fourth Street together, to sort of start
[00:02:04.740]building those coalitions between business owners,
[00:02:06.890]so that they can be advocates for themselves,
[00:02:09.220]and really bring in investment to this community.
[00:02:11.470]So we did this by going to every single business
[00:02:13.640]on Fourth Street, introducing ourselves,
[00:02:15.940]giving out our information, tracking whether or not
[00:02:19.170]they had the resources they need,
[00:02:20.460]that they know about UNL Extension,
[00:02:22.207]that they have something as simple as
[00:02:24.260]a sign with their store hours on it.
[00:02:26.670]Did they have an Open and Closed sign?
[00:02:28.010]'Cause those things are not necessarily popular
[00:02:29.580]in the Latino culture, but as an American,
[00:02:31.960]would I walk into a store without knowing
[00:02:33.680]if it was open or not?
[00:02:34.580]No.
[00:02:35.413]So we wanted to really make sure that
[00:02:36.680]we were connecting and bridging these cultural divides
[00:02:39.970]to help to bring these two communities together,
[00:02:42.290]so we didn't have Fourth Street
[00:02:44.180]and the rest of Grand Island,
[00:02:45.200]we had Grand Island, and the diverse
[00:02:46.810]and beautiful community that it is.
[00:02:49.790]We also found a lot of people didn't really know
[00:02:53.150]about UNL Extension's Latino Small Business Program,
[00:02:56.070]so Angela became our resident videographer,
[00:02:58.640]and created some success story videos
[00:03:01.010]of entrepreneurs that have been helped by the program,
[00:03:03.330]and those are free then for UNL Extension to use
[00:03:05.940]in any promotional activities they need,
[00:03:07.550]and we also created a physical brochure,
[00:03:10.250]the photo of that you can see here,
[00:03:12.160]that I took Angela's video and testimonies,
[00:03:14.410]and I synthesized that into a brochure on paper,
[00:03:17.420]and Angela also identified a need in the Latino community
[00:03:20.520]for some mental health programming.
[00:03:24.140]It's something that is not super common to talk about
[00:03:27.120]in the Latino culture, and so we wanted to make sure that,
[00:03:30.640]as we, as this very complicated time in our country
[00:03:34.770]is happening, that people understand that
[00:03:39.100]it's okay to talk about these things,
[00:03:40.700]that there's support, and that you're not crazy.
[00:03:44.840]Sometimes you can't just pick yourself up
[00:03:46.760]by your bootstraps, and that those things
[00:03:49.540]do need to be talked about.
[00:03:50.680]And so I'm gonna let Angela kinda talk about Broken Bow.
[00:03:52.830]Yeah, so, for the last three weeks
[00:03:55.010]of our 10-week program,
[00:03:56.260]we were grateful to our Custer County team
[00:03:59.540]for letting us come.
[00:04:00.920]And we just ended up working very well with,
[00:04:04.160]we just hit the place running.
[00:04:06.010]It was great.
[00:04:07.410]We just ended up doing different event,
[00:04:09.300]like I actually created an event,
[00:04:10.980]while Alyssa was busy with other projects,
[00:04:13.020]doing an internship, for future internship projects.
[00:04:17.130]We worked with hopefully making a dog park happen.
[00:04:21.680]The Youth Leadership, going back to what
[00:04:23.100]Alyssa was working with, Meg, was it Haley?
[00:04:26.080]Yeah, Haley. It was Haley.
[00:04:27.990]We entered Custer County a project
[00:04:29.480]that was worked with with Megan,
[00:04:31.030]and we tried to do both what was already running,
[00:04:33.890]and kind of get what was new at the same time,
[00:04:36.690]within the last three weeks.
[00:04:37.630]We just, we had probably eight different projects
[00:04:40.460]we were trying to do in the last three weeks
[00:04:42.040]when we were there.
[00:04:43.200]It was amazing. (laughs)
[00:04:44.986]But we managed.
[00:04:45.819]Yeah, so we actually did accomplish
[00:04:47.990]eight projects in three weeks,
[00:04:50.920]with the help of Amber, Haley, and Megan, as a team.
[00:04:54.950]Andrew was willing to sort of restructure
[00:04:57.260]and reform our team, as we came in,
[00:05:00.210]as like this surprise bonus at the end.
[00:05:02.240]We think we're a bonus.
[00:05:04.362]And so, we set up the goal of finishing
[00:05:07.270]these eight projects, and so,
[00:05:08.690]the primary purpose of the dog park
[00:05:10.270]was to fund the Scenic Byway Interpretive Center,
[00:05:15.030]which is essentially the visitor center
[00:05:17.170]at the beginning of Highway 2.
[00:05:19.841]While it turns out, for liability reasons,
[00:05:21.620]it won't be able to go at the barn to be a funding source,
[00:05:23.650]we did identify that it was a need
[00:05:25.047]and a desire for the community, so that's been passed on,
[00:05:27.980]and different stakeholders in the community
[00:05:29.770]will be continuing that.
[00:05:32.430]Youth Leadership Custer County is a high school program,
[00:05:35.950]and it's actually currently being revamped,
[00:05:38.320]because Broken Bow, or Custer County Schools
[00:05:40.590]have added a new program for career readiness,
[00:05:44.020]so we were like, "What can we do to really set
[00:05:46.047]"Youth Leadership Custer County apart,
[00:05:48.147]"and what do our students need to be successful
[00:05:51.607]"in the rural communities of the future?"
[00:05:53.180]And so we identified that these students
[00:05:55.860]need to be entrepreneurial, they need to be innovative,
[00:05:58.510]and they need to be leaders.
[00:05:59.930]And so we operated to create this program
[00:06:02.350]at the nexus of those three things,
[00:06:05.170]and were really able to kind of experiment,
[00:06:07.530]and I'm sure Megan will be able to tell
[00:06:09.270]more about what Haley worked on that, as well.
[00:06:11.410]And then Intern Custer County,
[00:06:13.500]we have a lot of large businesses,
[00:06:16.970]we have, well, a couple large businesses,
[00:06:18.520]in Broken Bow, that hire several interns.
[00:06:21.080]And we wanted to make sure that we weren't,
[00:06:23.370]we were fighting brain drain,
[00:06:24.910]and starting to get brain gain.
[00:06:27.180]And so Andrew is of the mindset
[00:06:30.080]that you stay where you grow the most.
[00:06:32.850]And research actually backs it up.
[00:06:36.440]So our primary needs are a sense of
[00:06:39.080]connection to the community,
[00:06:40.480]a sense of growth, and recreational needs.
[00:06:42.500]So Intern Custer County program
[00:06:43.980]has been designed to meet those needs for the future.
[00:06:48.690]All right, so with inclusive leadership,
[00:06:51.460]I personally focused it more on an individual self,
[00:06:54.160]because a lot of my summer was growing myself.
[00:06:57.530]And so I started to look more towards
[00:06:59.850]the differences between people,
[00:07:01.240]so how those differences between Alyssa and I work,
[00:07:04.550]but then also the similarities of how we can make this work,
[00:07:07.460]both our differences and similarities.
[00:07:09.740]And so, with our picture here,
[00:07:11.430]this is actually when we volunteered
[00:07:13.750]with the Heartland Workers Center,
[00:07:15.340]and the Young Nebraskans in Action.
[00:07:17.700]We helped them with their proclamation
[00:07:20.020]of Immigrant Month in June, down in Grand Island.
[00:07:23.730]Awesome.
[00:07:24.763]So one thing that helped,
[00:07:27.200]I really grew as an inclusive leader
[00:07:30.330]was in kind of working in conflict,
[00:07:32.710]and how to communicate.
[00:07:34.180]And so I am a fifth or sixth generation Nebraskan,
[00:07:39.100]and a daughter of a farmer,
[00:07:40.670]so one could imagine, I'm relatively stubborn.
[00:07:44.390]And so, I had to kind of learn
[00:07:48.210]that it's not necessarily my way or the highway.
[00:07:51.773]And kind of learn to yield to other people's perspectives.
[00:07:58.205]And with that, I like to take action,
[00:08:00.480]and I like to be efficient, and I like to be decisive,
[00:08:02.530]and that's not always how everybody works.
[00:08:04.430]And that's okay.
[00:08:05.757]And so, I had to learn to ask questions,
[00:08:08.760]and understand other people's work processes,
[00:08:11.998]I had to be able to sort of yield to other people's opinion,
[00:08:15.290]and not be the one in charge,
[00:08:17.600]'cause the leader isn't always the one running the show.
[00:08:20.270]They also have to yield and let others do.
[00:08:22.980]And that was something that I've never had to do before,
[00:08:26.560]and it's not my favorite thing.
[00:08:29.010]But I got really, really good at it,
[00:08:30.340]and I learned to enjoy it.
[00:08:32.370]I learned to enjoy running the background,
[00:08:34.790]and not having to be the one on center stage,
[00:08:36.900]in control of everything.
[00:08:38.350]So that's how I grew.
[00:08:41.840]Our community impact,
[00:08:43.320]with both, between Broken Bow and Grand Island,
[00:08:46.770]we tried to help with the identity, with our projects,
[00:08:50.626]whether it's helping Fourth Street
[00:08:52.660]with their project of creating a directory,
[00:08:55.310]or helping with maybe, helping with the barn
[00:08:57.910]when we were in Broken Bow.
[00:08:59.330]We tried to help bring out that identity
[00:09:01.220]that both places have.
[00:09:03.790]Lowering the stigma, this was more of a Grand Island thing,
[00:09:05.980]because Latinos in Grand Island tend to be
[00:09:08.810]viewed negatively, and so we tried to help it,
[00:09:11.700]like, "Oh, well Fourth Street isn't a bad place.
[00:09:14.037]"You can still go get your tacos, and have a good time.
[00:09:17.297]"You won't have anything bad happen."
[00:09:19.870]Highlighting positives, like the barn in Broken Bow's
[00:09:22.550]a good place to go visit.
[00:09:23.940]Definitely would recommend, it's amazing.
[00:09:25.760]We filmed there for a reason.
[00:09:28.720]Fourth Street as well, it's a wonderful place.
[00:09:30.910]You get tiny little Mexico
[00:09:32.960]within the US here, and it's great.
[00:09:35.730]Providing safe area, like everyone in general,
[00:09:38.420]because Grand Island, going back,
[00:09:42.254]Latinos are viewed negatively,
[00:09:44.060]and so we're trying to bring that out
[00:09:45.380]that it's not a negative place, but a positive place.
[00:09:48.000]You just have to see it differently,
[00:09:49.374]leave the rumors aside, leave the stereotypes,
[00:09:51.940]step outta your comfort zone.
[00:09:54.320]Community in Broken Bow, if we could have done
[00:09:58.009]the dog park ourselves, we could've done it
[00:10:01.170]within the last three weeks.
[00:10:02.280]Heck, we ran with it.
[00:10:03.910]And give safe area for dogs to run.
[00:10:06.370]Just like without having to be held back with their leash.
[00:10:10.020]Yeah, so we really focused in the summer,
[00:10:12.000]in whatever we did, on creating a sense of identity,
[00:10:15.640]creating an awareness of the positive
[00:10:19.020]influences of a community,
[00:10:20.450]and providing safe areas, not just for our dog friends,
[00:10:23.870]but also for our people friends.
[00:10:26.440]And so that everybody can kind of have that safe space.
[00:10:29.520]They can feel comfortable, because yes,
[00:10:32.730]you have to be uncomfortable to grow,
[00:10:34.300]but you have to have somewhere safe to come back to,
[00:10:36.550]to be able to learn and process and develop that growth,
[00:10:39.670]otherwise, it was just a challenge,
[00:10:41.280]you necessarily didn't learn anything from it.
[00:10:42.800]You have to have that developmental process.
[00:10:46.614]Yeah.
[00:10:47.522]Do you wanna go first?
[00:10:48.355]Sure.
[00:10:49.188]Okay, so we also grew a lot personally.
[00:10:54.420]One of, or two of my top five strengths
[00:10:56.440]are belief and connectedness.
[00:10:58.590]And so that means I like to ask the question why a lot.
[00:11:02.177]And I like to think about
[00:11:04.090]really, really complicated problems.
[00:11:07.070]But our education system doesn't necessarily
[00:11:09.950]allow for that a lot.
[00:11:10.900]I've become a really good hoop jumper.
[00:11:13.530]I'm really great at taking tests,
[00:11:15.700]I'm really good at writing you an essay in an hour,
[00:11:19.690]but I learned this summer that it's okay
[00:11:22.800]to take time from my to-do list, and step away from tasks,
[00:11:26.620]and use my strengths of thinking about big, hairy problems,
[00:11:30.530]and be able to, and it's productive to do that,
[00:11:34.490]even if I'm not necessarily
[00:11:35.530]checking something off of a list.
[00:11:37.300]And that was super important for me,
[00:11:38.627]and that goes along with process versus product.
[00:11:42.560]As a leader, I am very, I saw myself in two different roles.
[00:11:47.920]Either I am in charge of a project, running the project,
[00:11:51.030]and it has my name on it, so it must be perfect,
[00:11:53.070]it must be completed on time,
[00:11:54.380]and it must be a high-quality product,
[00:11:56.490]and me as a facilitator, was a completely different role.
[00:11:59.300]I've never had those roles kind of mesh before.
[00:12:02.570]And so, for the first time, I was in a leadership role
[00:12:04.650]where yes, I care about the product,
[00:12:06.600]but I also cared about the process.
[00:12:08.280]How was I getting there?
[00:12:09.113]Who was I contacting?
[00:12:10.530]Who was I helping grow as a person
[00:12:12.400]throughout that process?
[00:12:13.930]And that was the first time I've ever had to
[00:12:15.930]kind of combine those things,
[00:12:17.620]and it was a really hairy, challenging process,
[00:12:20.270]and I'm by no means perfect at it,
[00:12:21.910]but I'm really grateful to be able
[00:12:23.250]to have had that practice before I go into the workforce.
[00:12:28.080]All right, so for me, I grew a lot with my confidence.
[00:12:32.776]I'm not gonna lie, it is hard for me to ask for help.
[00:12:37.040]It was one of the hardest things I had to do this summer.
[00:12:39.170]I would always ask for help, and be like,
[00:12:40.517]"Alyssa, can you help me out with this?"
[00:12:43.020]It was, like I said, going back,
[00:12:44.940]this summer was something I really grew with.
[00:12:46.880]'Cause I am the first to do a lot of things in my family.
[00:12:50.660]I'm a first-gen student, I'm, my first time
[00:12:53.030]doing a internship, actually, ever,
[00:12:56.100]I just finished my first year, it's hard for me.
[00:12:59.750]So I really stepped out of my box this summer,
[00:13:02.937]and so for me, asking for help was something
[00:13:05.110]I really had to step up to the plate, and be like,
[00:13:08.487]"I need help, what's my next step?" kinda thing.
[00:13:11.650]So I really grew with that.
[00:13:13.430]I also grew with the strength to be myself.
[00:13:16.760]You can ask probably my office mates,
[00:13:18.310]I am a, tend to be very quiet person.
[00:13:20.760]My mom finds that very rare,
[00:13:22.550]because I don't stop talking at home.
[00:13:23.993](Alyssa laughs)
[00:13:26.040]Love you, mom.
[00:13:27.100](audience laughs)
[00:13:29.650]But I have grown to be like myself,
[00:13:32.150]because I am a Mexican-American in the US,
[00:13:37.000]and so for me, I have to fight with my cultural views
[00:13:41.930]at the same time, the kind of person I wanna be,
[00:13:44.220]so the strength to be myself
[00:13:45.580]is finding out a lot about that, about myself this summer.
[00:13:49.050]So I grew with challenges, but I am looking forward
[00:13:52.290]towards those challenges.
[00:13:53.600]'Cause that's what's helped me become the person
[00:13:56.610]I am this summer, after this summer.
[00:13:59.360]Awesome.
[00:14:01.930]All right, and so we just want to say thank you to everybody
[00:14:05.210]who helped support us in Grand Island,
[00:14:07.180]the RFI team, our Custer County team,
[00:14:09.727]and our Grand Island team that couldn't be here.
[00:14:12.267]A lot of the other fellows had a quote,
[00:14:14.710]and so I think our quote would be, "What's it for?"
[00:14:17.677](audience laughs)
[00:14:19.610]So we always ask, whenever we do anything now,
[00:14:23.247]"What is the purpose of this project?
[00:14:25.127]"Who are we helping?
[00:14:26.457]"What is it accomplishing?"
[00:14:28.140]And I think that's just a really good takeaway
[00:14:30.670]for all of life, is what are you doing it for?
[00:14:35.170]So with that, we would like to invite
[00:14:37.470]Amber Ross, and Andrew Eberts up to talk, correct?
[00:14:40.477]No. No? Okay.
[00:14:42.100]They're gonna go at the end.
[00:14:43.000]Okay, so if you have any questions then.
[00:14:44.730]Questions for us.
[00:14:49.351]I'm interested in,
[00:14:52.781]what kind of housing accommodations you had,
[00:14:56.040]as resident interns in these two communities.
[00:15:00.125]Right.
[00:15:00.958]Yeah, so in Grand Island,
[00:15:02.770]we ended up staying with a host family.
[00:15:05.440]So our supervisor in Grand Island
[00:15:08.040]had a really good friend that welcomed us into her home,
[00:15:10.790]and kinda treated us as a part of her family.
[00:15:13.050]And then, Broken Bow, we stayed in the Arrow Hotel,
[00:15:15.420]which was just off the Square.
[00:15:16.580]So it had a little, it was like a long-term stay
[00:15:19.170]kinda hotel, so yeah.
[00:15:21.500]Any other questions?
[00:15:26.136]Yes. Yeah.
[00:15:27.175]Would you do it again?
[00:15:29.070]Yes.
[00:15:30.070]Because I personally enjoy rural.
[00:15:32.420]I am Wayne born, 'round Wayne raised.
[00:15:36.800]So I love the whole small town feel.
[00:15:39.830]I would go back, do it all over again.
[00:15:41.900]Even if it's 10 weeks, let's go.
[00:15:43.944](audience laughs)
[00:15:46.690]Yeah, I think that I would also do it again.
[00:15:50.020]Especially in the last three weeks,
[00:15:51.850]I think I grew more as a person
[00:15:54.085]than I had in a lot of time in my college experience.
[00:16:00.230]Partially just 'cause of the intensity
[00:16:01.890]of getting thrown into a new place,
[00:16:04.510]with three weeks to accomplish something amazing.
[00:16:06.900]And partially because of the people
[00:16:08.610]that we found in that community.
[00:16:11.010]I think there is a lot to be said
[00:16:13.580]for mentors who are willing to invest in you,
[00:16:18.040]get to know you, and challenge you,
[00:16:21.040]and ask you, "What's it for?".
[00:16:26.604]All right. Thank you guys.
[00:16:27.437]Oh. (audience applauds)

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Final Presentation GrandIsland

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments