2021 Rural Fellows—Thayer County

Esther Uwamahoro & Lilia Torres Author

08/13/2021 Added

37 Plays

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Student and Community Fellows talk about the community development projects they worked on in Thayer County, Nebraska during Summer 2021.

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[00:00:04.010]Hi, this is Esther and Lilia
[00:00:05.940]from RPN Thayer County,
[00:00:08.690]and we are happy to be here and to be talking
[00:00:10.923]about what we have been working on throughout this summer.
[00:00:14.600]So with our supervisor Jason Teller,
[00:00:17.860]we have been working on a program, I can call it program
[00:00:22.830]that is called "Web First Impressions",
[00:00:25.240]which is similar to First Impressions,
[00:00:27.810]but done for the web.
[00:00:31.410]So "Web First Impressions" is a process or an assessment
[00:00:35.420]throughout which visitors
[00:00:38.050]or people who are new to a community
[00:00:40.670]come in to look at the community and view it
[00:00:43.860]to tell the strengths and weaknesses of the community
[00:00:47.970]in order to give that feedback to the community leaders.
[00:00:51.780]And the community leaders can then go ahead to use it
[00:00:54.900]and to improve the experience
[00:00:56.570]of everyone that is going to come to their community.
[00:00:59.590]We have developed a questionnaire,
[00:01:01.930]and the questionnaire is going to be used
[00:01:05.740]by Extension leaders, Extension agents
[00:01:10.360]who are going to assess different rural Nebraska towns,
[00:01:15.610]and see whether, if you are looking at these communities
[00:01:19.880]through the web or through the internet,
[00:01:22.030]you're going to have a good experience.
[00:01:24.390]So this questionnaire that we have developed.
[00:01:29.000]We went on then to apply to different towns,
[00:01:33.230]like the town of Imperial.
[00:01:35.480]We're working on the town of Superior on Thursday,
[00:01:38.990]and other towns that we did while trying it out.
[00:01:42.220]And then after presenting to them our findings,
[00:01:45.270]then they can use that feedback
[00:01:47.830]to improve on their communities, yeah.
[00:01:52.590]Yeah, like Esther was saying,
[00:01:53.770]we've already worked with the city of Imperial.
[00:01:56.260]We've worked doing research on Chadron, Ord, Nebraska.
[00:02:00.630]So basically what we do, we look into web presence,
[00:02:03.550]which would be we could do
[00:02:05.380]a quick little Google search of the town.
[00:02:07.730]We'd be looking into various restaurants,
[00:02:10.210]grocery stores, hotels, motels.
[00:02:13.920]And we're basically looking
[00:02:14.920]for whether the information provided is accurate
[00:02:17.590]like telephone numbers, addresses,
[00:02:21.920]hours of operation,
[00:02:23.600]because we're looking at this from the perspective
[00:02:25.610]of an outsider who has no knowledge of the town.
[00:02:29.120]So we wanna maximize tourism.
[00:02:32.240]We wanna maximize future residents' experiences.
[00:02:35.980]We also wanna maximize the experience
[00:02:38.380]of current residents.
[00:02:39.760]We wanna make sure everybody
[00:02:40.730]is being provided accurate information.
[00:02:43.730]So by doing so, we wanna highlight
[00:02:45.630]both the strengths and the weaknesses
[00:02:47.930]of each and every town that we look into.
[00:02:51.290]So so far, we've had a very great experience
[00:02:53.660]with the communities we've worked with.
[00:02:55.660]They've been very welcoming to us.
[00:02:57.610]They've been very open to our questionnaire.
[00:03:00.850]And I'll let Esther talk about her experience
[00:03:03.870]that she's had so far.
[00:03:06.650]My experience has been very,
[00:03:09.820]I can say it was good.
[00:03:12.280]It was mixed with learning new things,
[00:03:15.910]and actually learning new things about the community,
[00:03:20.010]like Nebraska and learning new things
[00:03:22.650]about my team, Lilia and Jason,
[00:03:25.690]also learning about myself as a leader.
[00:03:28.980]So throughout the summer,
[00:03:31.190]I did not only learn about the new towns
[00:03:34.410]that I didn't know in Nebraska.
[00:03:36.890]I also learned about different ways I act as a leader
[00:03:41.090]and how I can probably improve
[00:03:43.640]or actually keep doing what I thought was
[00:03:48.170]one element that was good, yeah.
[00:03:53.755]The one thing that we probably forgot to mention
[00:03:55.680]that maybe some of you don't know,
[00:03:58.150]we have been completely 100% virtual.
[00:04:01.340]So that has made our experience a little bit challenging
[00:04:05.290]because we never got to witness
[00:04:07.200]and view these communities firsthand.
[00:04:09.570]So this kinda was just something completely new to us,
[00:04:12.910]just doing research over the web,
[00:04:15.030]doing a lot of Zoom calls and meetings.
[00:04:19.010]It was a learning experience for the two of us,
[00:04:21.140]but I think this has definitely helped me grow as a leader.
[00:04:24.320]It helped me with public speaking skills
[00:04:26.600]to help me be a lot better with like time management,
[00:04:32.430]especially with having to be on time for different meetings
[00:04:36.200]with different communities.
[00:04:38.360]Some of the times our communities
[00:04:40.140]are in different time zones.
[00:04:42.260]So that kind of threw us off a little bit,
[00:04:44.030]but overall, I've had an amazing experience
[00:04:47.000]with both Esther and Jason.
[00:04:49.460]I hope to take a lot of tools from this experience.
[00:04:52.200]Yeah.
[00:04:53.740]One thing also that I can add to that
[00:04:57.100]would be the communication.
[00:04:58.860]I mean, effective communication has been key.
[00:05:01.710]Especially since we were working 100% virtually,
[00:05:06.730]we found that communication
[00:05:09.270]and actually teamwork is something that helped us
[00:05:12.950]go through the whole project
[00:05:16.270]and end it well.
[00:05:18.160]Another thing we can say about
[00:05:22.960]how we developed as inclusive leaders,
[00:05:25.470]on my part, I can say that having to work with a team
[00:05:30.100]that is made of, like, we are three different people.
[00:05:34.620]I'm talking about background.
[00:05:36.670]I'm talking about personality.
[00:05:38.780]I'm talking about experience.
[00:05:40.540]So actually hearing and seeing the communities
[00:05:44.590]in the lens and the ideas in the lens of every one of us,
[00:05:48.540]different ideas, different perspectives
[00:05:52.890]has helped us develop into more inclusive leaders
[00:05:57.320]who did not just based on their own experience
[00:06:01.940]or based on their own opinions, yeah.
[00:06:06.880]Well, there you guys have it.
[00:06:08.050]So thank you for viewing our presentation
[00:06:10.780]of our experience within Thayer County.
[00:06:13.260]We hope you enjoyed the information we gave you.
[00:06:16.882]Yeah, and it has been a good,
[00:06:20.910]a good how many weeks?
[00:06:23.940]It's been about what, a good two months so far?
[00:06:26.410]Yeah, it has been a good two months
[00:06:28.620]being a Rural Fellow.
[00:06:30.290]Thank you so much.
[00:06:31.760]Thank you.

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2021 Rural Fellows—Thayer County

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