Rural Prosperity Nebraska: Connecting Research and Practice to Rural Community Vitality

Mary Emery, Director, Rural Prosperity Nebraska Author

03/06/2024 Added

32 Plays

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This presentation will focus on Rural Prosperity Nebraska (RPN) and its mandate to connect research and extension in support of rural communities, families, and businesses. RPN extension includes work in community leadership, local and regional food systems, community economic development and entrepreneurship, cooperative development, placemaking and resident attraction, and community and youth engagement.

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[00:00:00.750]The following presentation is part
[00:00:02.670]of the Agronomy and Horticulture seminar series
[00:00:05.790]at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:00:08.220]Well, hello everybody. My name is Camilla.
[00:00:10.260]I'm a Master's student here in the department,
[00:00:12.600]and today we welcome Dr. Mary Emery.
[00:00:16.050]Thank you for joining us in one more seminar series.
[00:00:19.770]And Dr. Mary Emery is a Director
[00:00:22.050]of Rural Prosperity Nebraska,
[00:00:24.420]has a deep and abiding interest in community
[00:00:27.450]and economic development, research, and practice,
[00:00:30.570]including using the Community Capitals Framework
[00:00:34.230]that also is known as CCF
[00:00:36.690]in evaluation research on community change,
[00:00:39.420]community leadership, and program planning.
[00:00:42.570]Recent research has focused on the interaction
[00:00:45.630]of social capital and reflexivity in creating
[00:00:49.800]a spiraling effect in building community capacity,
[00:00:53.610]for increasing community wellbeing,
[00:00:55.710]and growing prosperity for all,
[00:00:57.960]and on addressing diversity, inclusion,
[00:01:00.570]and equity in higher education.
[00:01:02.970]She's also working
[00:01:04.140]with collaborators on strengthening
[00:01:06.480]our approach to community-engaged research.
[00:01:09.690]So welcome Dr. Emery, and for those online,
[00:01:13.500]we will have questions 10 minutes
[00:01:16.200]after the presentation
[00:01:18.150]and for who is here joining us as well.
[00:01:21.480]Thank you.
[00:01:25.975]Am I ready?
[00:01:27.660]So thank you so much for inviting me
[00:01:29.700]to come and join you.
[00:01:30.840]I ask what do you all think
[00:01:34.740]would be of interest about Rural Prosperity Nebraska
[00:01:37.590]and the work that you did?
[00:01:39.090]And I didn't get an answer,
[00:01:41.227]so I've got the opportunity
[00:01:43.500]to kind of show you the whole spread
[00:01:46.260]of what we do, some of which may overlap
[00:01:48.690]with some of your work and some not.
[00:01:50.760]So if you have a question
[00:01:51.870]or you want me to go into more depth
[00:01:53.610]about any particular thing, just let me know.
[00:01:56.160]I know you normally do questions at the end,
[00:01:58.620]but us community development people like interactions.
[00:02:01.920]So I'm happy to have any questions anytime.
[00:02:07.230]So today is the beginning of my third year
[00:02:14.820]at University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:02:16.710]So I'm fairly new to this.
[00:02:18.690]Some of you may have been familiar
[00:02:20.490]with Rural Futures Institute.
[00:02:23.400]And so Rural Prosperity Nebraska is kind of the phoenix
[00:02:27.660]that came out of the ending of Rural Futures.
[00:02:32.370]So we're what Mike Bain likes to call a hub.
[00:02:38.700]So the Rural Prosperity Nebraska Hub
[00:02:42.810]brings together researchers, educators,
[00:02:45.690]Extension people in service to communities
[00:02:48.780]who wanna engage with one another
[00:02:50.790]to create and make for themselves
[00:02:53.880]a more prosperous future for all.
[00:02:57.690]So that entails a lot of different interactions.
[00:03:00.930]I think in some ways there are some Extension groups
[00:03:03.870]that what they do is we have this curriculum
[00:03:07.350]and we deliver these programs
[00:03:08.880]and we do this training
[00:03:10.290]and we deliver these training programs.
[00:03:13.050]I imagine a lot of Extension in your work
[00:03:17.370]is less around delivering evidence-based curriculum,
[00:03:23.100]and more about visiting with people
[00:03:24.900]about what's going on here and how can we help.
[00:03:27.660]And RPN Extension is a lot that too.
[00:03:31.560]We spend a lot of time in communities
[00:03:33.871]helping them facilitate, but facilitating conversations,
[00:03:37.950]helping them consider planning options,
[00:03:40.200]identifying resources for them,
[00:03:43.440]as well as doing programming.
[00:03:46.350]So the RPN Hub is Extension,
[00:03:50.250]and we have the RPN team
[00:03:53.700]and we have the Rural Poll.
[00:03:55.860]And just out of curiosity,
[00:03:58.080]anybody here familiar with the Rural Poll?
[00:04:03.120]A new audience, yes. Okay.
[00:04:06.540]So the Rural Poll has been around
[00:04:08.520]for 27 years, I believe,
[00:04:14.190]and it's the longest ongoing Rural Poll left
[00:04:17.910]in the line grant system.
[00:04:19.380]So kudos to Rural Poll at Nebraska.
[00:04:23.400]And what we do every year is we,
[00:04:27.150]well, I'll go into that a little bit more.
[00:04:29.880]Rural Poll, and then research,
[00:04:33.240]we have the Thrive Project
[00:04:34.890]with the College of Business where they do this analysis
[00:04:38.370]of regional economic development periodically.
[00:04:41.520]And then we're involved
[00:04:42.900]a lot with community-engaged research.
[00:04:45.725]So one of the things that happens to folks like me
[00:04:48.690]is people in fields other than social science
[00:04:56.370]often wanna apply for a grant.
[00:04:58.380]And the grant will say
[00:04:59.940]you have to have a social scientist on this grant.
[00:05:02.790]Or the grant will say
[00:05:04.020]you have to engage with communities on this project.
[00:05:07.290]And so those folks tend to come to people like me
[00:05:09.900]and say, "I wanna add you to the grant project."
[00:05:13.560]And we have some challenges with helping people understand
[00:05:18.720]community-engaged research is not doing a focus group.
[00:05:22.590]And then education, the Rural Fellows Project.
[00:05:25.320]And then we're involved now
[00:05:26.520]with the East Campus Social Science Group,
[00:05:29.730]which includes a lot of people who get asked
[00:05:31.500]to be on grants at the last minute.
[00:05:34.620]So we all work in Nebraska,
[00:05:37.770]we all care about the opportunities
[00:05:39.600]and possibilities in Nebraska, Extension, UNL,
[00:05:43.050]the land grant mission is to help people reach
[00:05:46.860]for those possibilities and address those challenges.
[00:05:51.480]So the Rural Poll, we do that every year.
[00:05:55.620]We do a sample of rural Nebraska, once in a while,
[00:05:58.800]we partner with the metropolitan areas
[00:06:01.200]and do a statewide poll.
[00:06:03.300]We have some questions that are the same every year
[00:06:06.000]and we have questions that we add periodically.
[00:06:11.400]If you are doing a poll
[00:06:13.170]and you wanna know, for example,
[00:06:14.970]what are people thinking about climate change
[00:06:17.580]or you're thinking about doing a survey,
[00:06:19.980]you wanna know what people
[00:06:20.813]are thinking about climate change,
[00:06:22.680]you wanna know what people are thinking about water quality,
[00:06:26.670]you wanna know what are people thinking about AI
[00:06:30.900]and what it's gonna do to us in this small community
[00:06:34.290]and what the heck is going on with those drones.
[00:06:37.170]How about wind power?
[00:06:39.210]A lot of communities being upset over wind power.
[00:06:44.100]Those are all things
[00:06:45.030]the Rural Poll can help you get an understanding of
[00:06:48.690]what people are thinking about those issues
[00:06:51.330]in rural Nebraska.
[00:06:52.950]This last year,
[00:06:54.420]we asked some questions about wellbeing in Nebraska.
[00:06:58.140]Now curiously, in the last year,
[00:07:01.800]the labor market has loosened up a little bit,
[00:07:05.370]increases in housing are no longer skyrocketing.
[00:07:09.180]They're kind of leveled off a little bit.
[00:07:11.790]Economy's going well,
[00:07:13.200]but people in rural Nebraska now think things are worse
[00:07:19.620]and they're worried about the next five years.
[00:07:23.040]Even the people who think
[00:07:24.360]it's about the same have gone down.
[00:07:26.970]And the people that were hopeful for the future here
[00:07:29.760]just before Covid, they're not as hopeful anymore.
[00:07:33.210]So this is the kind of information that Rural Poll has.
[00:07:37.140]You can go to our website, you can look at the reports.
[00:07:40.860]We're happy to meet with you if you're interested
[00:07:43.290]in learning about or adding questions to the survey
[00:07:46.860]or seeing if we've asked questions in the past
[00:07:49.320]that might be helpful to you.
[00:07:53.580]And the website, ruralpoll.unl.edu. Yes?
[00:08:04.230]All of a sudden...
[00:08:06.570]Sorry, sorry, it's...
[00:08:14.520]So when you do the polls, do you kinda look at it from,
[00:08:18.030]I mean from a trend looks like you saw an uptick
[00:08:20.190]in better off starting in 2008.
[00:08:21.930]Is there any rationale, is there any justification
[00:08:24.840]for why rural Nebraskans felt an uptick
[00:08:29.250]in being better off in the last 14 years or so?
[00:08:36.060]So is your question
[00:08:37.410]that it's sort of gone up and now it's gone down?
[00:08:41.640]It's like a trend line.
[00:08:42.540]You start, you look at it, before 2008,
[00:08:45.270]everything was in the 30s, low 40s,
[00:08:48.090]then you got into 53,
[00:08:50.610]and then it's still kind of been in the 50s ever since.
[00:08:55.260]So in 2008, nine and 10, that was the recession.
[00:08:58.920]So things started to go up.
[00:09:00.510]I don't know what happened in 2013, 14,
[00:09:05.610]but then we...
[00:09:12.060]Significant problem.
[00:09:14.430]So those are the kind of things that you see there.
[00:09:17.040]What we know from Pew Charitable Trust
[00:09:21.180]and the surveys they do, which are nationwide,
[00:09:24.360]is that Nebraska's not alone in having this trend.
[00:09:30.450]And they connect it, correlate,
[00:09:36.060]I'm not talking about cause here,
[00:09:37.710]they correlate it with the increased polarization
[00:09:41.610]and feelings of people not liking their neighbor
[00:09:46.470]as much as they used to.
[00:09:51.570]And those of you that have been in rural Nebraska
[00:09:54.120]or been in rural Nebraska know that there's some sense
[00:09:58.650]that people are not as happy with each other
[00:10:03.000]with the situation as they were before Covid.
[00:10:10.350]So lots of factors there,
[00:10:12.930]but opportunities to work with us
[00:10:14.700]to learn more if you're interested.
[00:10:17.700]So when we think about challenges to rural Nebraska,
[00:10:21.060]I'm gonna go over a couple of these
[00:10:22.860]and then talk about some of the things
[00:10:24.319]we're doing around them.
[00:10:30.450]Josie Schrader at the Center for Public Research in Omaha
[00:10:35.850]did a presentation on trends in Nebraska.
[00:10:39.180]One of the things she highlighted
[00:10:41.040]was population decline in rural communities.
[00:10:43.860]This is a math that illustrates that decline.
[00:10:47.670]And lots of people were saying,
[00:10:50.737]"Well, we're just gonna start rolling up the sidewalks
[00:10:56.040]and closing down the stores."
[00:10:58.650]And I think there's a very different story
[00:11:03.570]in rural Nebraska
[00:11:04.403]and some of you that spend time there have been
[00:11:07.110]in rural Nebraska communities
[00:11:08.700]where the population is growing.
[00:11:10.650]Maybe the county isn't growing,
[00:11:12.450]but the community is growing in population.
[00:11:16.170]Valley County stands out as a community that's managed
[00:11:19.260]to really turn around
[00:11:20.940]a lot of that population decline and spur its economy.
[00:11:25.230]There are lots of very positive stories in Nebraska
[00:11:30.230]of communities that have turned around that rule decline.
[00:11:35.160]So it's a challenge. It's not unique to Nebraska either.
[00:11:40.830]And what it means is that
[00:11:45.335]for those places where there's an entrepreneurial spirit,
[00:11:49.950]which there are many of in rural Nebraska,
[00:11:53.100]I think about Lynch, Nebraska.
[00:11:54.690]So you think about how many people have been to Lynch?
[00:12:00.900]From the northern border. Population 227.
[00:12:06.780]So what can you do in a town with 227 people?
[00:12:13.260]You can go bowling, there's a movie theater,
[00:12:17.040]there's a cooperative grocery store.
[00:12:20.700]Lots of things happening in Lynch, Nebraska,
[00:12:24.339]population 227 last time I was there.
[00:12:28.860]Lots of possibilities.
[00:12:30.240]But if we have these folks that want to start businesses,
[00:12:35.340]start new enterprises,
[00:12:38.790]and the population is declining,
[00:12:40.560]where do they find the workforce?
[00:12:42.600]And if they find the workforce,
[00:12:44.160]what the heck do they do about the housing crunch,
[00:12:47.160]which we all feel here in Lincoln and around this area,
[00:12:52.470]but in rural communities,
[00:12:53.520]that housing crunch is more extreme,
[00:12:57.090]partly because the housing stock is not in good shape.
[00:13:00.540]So over time we can identify a challenge
[00:13:04.290]that we've not invested in housing in rural Nebraska.
[00:13:09.000]In rural communities in general.
[00:13:10.260]Again, this is not unique.
[00:13:11.970]And then if I do find somebody a house
[00:13:14.760]and they have kids, where's the childcare?
[00:13:19.500]So that's a real break on some really exciting possibilities
[00:13:25.440]that are happening in Nebraska.
[00:13:27.840]And there's a lot of efforts in place to try and do this.
[00:13:32.970]We used to have some subsidies for workforce housing,
[00:13:36.660]but under the current state administration, that got cut.
[00:13:42.090]But there's still a lot of people working on these projects
[00:13:45.090]and we're seeing some successes.
[00:13:47.880]Now if I am a business and I'm going great guns,
[00:13:53.430]rural Nebraska doesn't have the infrastructure
[00:13:55.770]to support me.
[00:13:57.210]So I was talking to the entrepreneurial coach
[00:14:00.090]in Hord, Nebraska, which is part of Valley County.
[00:14:04.410]We don't have enough accountants,
[00:14:08.430]we don't have enough people who can help with media.
[00:14:13.560]All those services that you find a lot of in the cities.
[00:14:17.640]We need to get those services.
[00:14:19.230]And those are wonderful business opportunities.
[00:14:21.930]Need to get the College of Business kids to think about
[00:14:24.480]you can go home and you can be
[00:14:26.580]a successful accountant there.
[00:14:28.140]And instead of working for somebody,
[00:14:30.120]you can own your own business.
[00:14:34.530]And then the other challenge is the percent
[00:14:37.920]of the population that's age 50 older.
[00:14:41.250]So recently there's been quite a bit
[00:14:43.410]of press about the decline
[00:14:45.540]of first responder services in rural Nebraska.
[00:14:49.110]So there's some place in Nebraska now
[00:14:50.940]that the hospital has to travel,
[00:14:52.950]I mean the ambulance has to travel 50 miles
[00:14:56.670]to get you to any help.
[00:15:00.060]That's a partly a function of this aging.
[00:15:04.200]So the aging is exacerbating the workforce problem
[00:15:09.330]and some of the other problems.
[00:15:11.580]Where the aging is not as much of a challenge
[00:15:16.170]is where we see increases in immigrant populations.
[00:15:20.580]In Nebraska, about 9% of the workforce is immigrant,
[00:15:25.410]and they constitute 8% of the economic output.
[00:15:34.620]Immigrants are more likely to start new businesses.
[00:15:38.400]So they can be an economic driver for small communities.
[00:15:44.940]So all of this means that there's a succession problem
[00:15:49.650]along with a recruiting challenge in rural Nebraska.
[00:15:53.610]So some of the information that we have on that
[00:15:57.090]is overall, there's gonna be 75 trillion dollars
[00:16:02.850]transferred from one generation to the next.
[00:16:05.880]And if that money is in rural Nebraska now,
[00:16:09.960]but the kids are all in the city,
[00:16:11.760]that money's gonna move out of rural Nebraska,
[00:16:14.610]Nebraska Community Foundation,
[00:16:16.710]one of their priorities is to try
[00:16:18.510]and keep some of that money.
[00:16:19.980]But at the same time,
[00:16:21.000]we're looking at baby boomers retiring at 10,000 a day.
[00:16:26.250]55% of the managerial positions
[00:16:29.370]will retire, significant numbers of nonprofits.
[00:16:32.850]And what we don't have data on,
[00:16:35.760]but it's really important for rural Nebraska
[00:16:37.830]is what's that gonna do to the volunteer structure.
[00:16:40.950]So if you live in a rural community in Nebraska
[00:16:44.880]or anywhere in the United States,
[00:16:47.310]your access to an ambulance or fire
[00:16:50.250]is based on the volunteers that can be recruited.
[00:16:54.330]Your access to taking care of the cemetery,
[00:17:00.150]delivering food to the elderly,
[00:17:01.860]that's all based on a volunteer structure.
[00:17:05.010]So we go out to rural communities where we talk
[00:17:06.870]to people about what are some things that are concerning you
[00:17:10.470]or keeping your community from moving forward,
[00:17:13.140]they'll say leadership succession.
[00:17:16.140]And I was in Chadron not too long ago
[00:17:18.690]and they were talking about a community
[00:17:20.760]down the road where every year,
[00:17:23.010]this great festival in the summer,
[00:17:25.350]and like, oh, we're all gonna meet our friends there
[00:17:28.200]and it's gonna be a great deal.
[00:17:29.940]Well it had been run by five ladies
[00:17:32.100]who are now in their 80s
[00:17:33.300]and they said, "We're not doing it anymore."
[00:17:41.850]Not uncommon that there's no one to run for office.
[00:17:48.360]Or organizations that falter
[00:17:50.160]because they don't have leaders.
[00:17:51.660]So this is a really big challenge
[00:17:54.240]for rural communities in general in rural Nebraska,
[00:17:57.780]we can see how it's impacting access to healthcare.
[00:18:01.800]It's impacting tourism,
[00:18:04.410]as well as just having people make the community run.
[00:18:11.340]So I wanted to also highlight some additional challenges.
[00:18:14.550]We are hearing more and more about mental health,
[00:18:17.220]substance use disorder.
[00:18:19.020]Natural figures indicate mental health issues
[00:18:22.020]have increased over 50% in the last 10 years.
[00:18:26.940]That's true in rural Nebraska, and in rural Nebraska,
[00:18:30.210]finding services is very, very difficult.
[00:18:35.070]I was in a community where they were talking about kids
[00:18:38.340]with behavioral problems that were taken out of class
[00:18:41.940]and put in the hospital for the three day period
[00:18:44.610]that the hospital could hold them.
[00:18:46.830]When they got out of the hospital,
[00:18:48.060]they were told you can have a telehealth therapy session
[00:18:53.550]six months from now.
[00:19:02.220]Declining access to healthcare all over nursing homes
[00:19:05.400]and hospitals across the country
[00:19:06.870]in rural America are closing.
[00:19:09.439]And then Covid showed us the challenges
[00:19:14.220]of our local and regional food system
[00:19:17.550]that if we can't get access to locally produced stuff
[00:19:23.550]and the transportation system's not working,
[00:19:26.700]then we're in trouble.
[00:19:28.710]And digital divide continues
[00:19:30.350]to be a challenge in rural Nebraska.
[00:19:32.910]And then you all probably have a lot to do
[00:19:34.920]with the challenges around climate change
[00:19:37.470]and adapting to extreme weather.
[00:19:41.250]Like you said, it was the drought that did it.
[00:19:46.980]This is RPN Extension.
[00:19:48.750]So all of those challenges, all those issues,
[00:19:51.000]all those possibilities, that's it.
[00:19:54.960]That's who they are.
[00:19:58.230]They work primarily in leadership,
[00:20:01.290]attracting new residents and placemaking
[00:20:06.330]and economic development and food systems.
[00:20:11.850]So I wanted to go over some current projects with you.
[00:20:15.000]So this is an AFRI-funded project.
[00:20:17.340]Some of you probably have AFRI grants, yeah?
[00:20:20.910]Had AFRI grants.
[00:20:24.180]It's beyond the farm gate building a leadership
[00:20:27.210]development system to support rural community
[00:20:29.876]wellbeing and prosperity.
[00:20:32.070]This project is really different
[00:20:33.660]from other leadership development projects
[00:20:37.080]because we think about, oh, no one's gonna run for office
[00:20:41.040]and we don't have anybody to help with the festival.
[00:20:43.800]Let's do a leadership development program.
[00:20:46.576]We'll get some new people going.
[00:20:47.790]We can think about that as kind of a bandaid
[00:20:50.280]that we put on this problem
[00:20:51.810]because it doesn't really solve the problem.
[00:20:54.030]So there's not a system for leadership succession.
[00:20:57.540]However, if you talk to the average folks
[00:21:00.660]in rural communities,
[00:21:02.430]there are a lot of leadership assets in that community.
[00:21:05.820]There are things that kids do, there are school programs,
[00:21:11.190]there are a lot of leadership possibilities,
[00:21:14.130]places for people to try it out, to learn.
[00:21:18.300]And I was talking to a colleague of mine
[00:21:20.783]that does research on successful communities in Iowa.
[00:21:23.370]And he was saying
[00:21:25.620]it's the leaders that make the difference.
[00:21:28.230]If you have good leaders,
[00:21:29.550]then that community is gonna be able to grow
[00:21:32.460]despite the challenges.
[00:21:34.350]So Dave, tell me what you learned
[00:21:38.940]about leadership development in that,
[00:21:42.442]was Extension there doing leadership program?
[00:21:44.160]And he said, "That's a good question. Let me think."
[00:21:47.910]They all mentioned FFA.
[00:21:51.570]When we think about who's gonna run for office,
[00:21:53.700]do we think about the kids that are in FFA now
[00:21:57.671]as future leaders, do we have a track for them?
[00:22:00.000]Do we have a way to recruit them
[00:22:02.160]into those kind of positions?
[00:22:05.100]So there's a lot of assets related
[00:22:07.080]to leadership in rural communities.
[00:22:09.690]We don't put them together.
[00:22:11.280]So they work together to address the succession problem.
[00:22:15.360]So that's what this project's about.
[00:22:18.840]And we got a second grant
[00:22:23.700]to pull leaders in Nebraska together
[00:22:26.610]to have a conversation with them
[00:22:28.410]about what are the leadership assets in your community
[00:22:31.920]and how might we pull them together
[00:22:34.110]to strengthen that succession problem.
[00:22:36.780]So every kid knows
[00:22:38.610]what opportunities there are in leadership
[00:22:41.070]when they're in kindergarten or their parents know,
[00:22:43.830]their family knows.
[00:22:44.910]They know if they do this, there's another pathway
[00:22:47.280]that they can take advantage of
[00:22:49.530]and they can see how that's connected
[00:22:51.570]to the community's wellbeing.
[00:22:53.640]We know if we do that, we also increase the likelihood
[00:22:57.690]that those young people will wanna come back to that area
[00:23:01.260]and make a life for themselves.
[00:23:03.960]So it solves more than one problem.
[00:23:08.250]We did partner with Nebraska Community Foundation on this.
[00:23:11.640]We had over 100 people attend. We held it in Kearney.
[00:23:16.680]This is some of the results of it.
[00:23:18.960]We talked about invisible structures,
[00:23:22.740]these these things that go on in a community
[00:23:24.990]that nobody really talks about.
[00:23:26.700]We just know somebody who knows somebody,
[00:23:30.150]and people like to think about that.
[00:23:33.720]They like to think about, yeah, I never thought about it.
[00:23:36.810]But these things exist.
[00:23:38.970]We talked about who's missing
[00:23:42.630]from the community leadership development
[00:23:44.310]conversation that needs to be there.
[00:23:46.560]We've started conversation with Nick Pace
[00:23:49.410]over in the College of Education
[00:23:56.700]about how the state system might be more of a solution
[00:24:02.100]to the leadership problem.
[00:24:03.750]We talked about how do we think differently about leadership
[00:24:06.720]instead of thinking,
[00:24:07.770]oh, we need help this person get these skills,
[00:24:10.080]how do we think about how do we get this community
[00:24:13.954]to support leadership?
[00:24:14.820]How do we get this community to uplift the leaders,
[00:24:18.564]the informal leaders that are already getting things done.
[00:24:22.800]We talked about the strengths
[00:24:23.940]and struggles of community leadership development
[00:24:26.580]and assets and challenges.
[00:24:28.770]And just so you know,
[00:24:29.850]the literature on community leadership development,
[00:24:33.660]there's no research that directly connects
[00:24:36.300]leadership development to community capacity development,
[00:24:39.960]community capacity directly.
[00:24:44.940]In fact, in some cases,
[00:24:46.350]leadership development means the go-getter
[00:24:49.050]that you wanted to recruit into more leader roles,
[00:24:51.840]takes leadership development program,
[00:24:53.970]develops some confidence, make some contacts,
[00:24:57.300]moves to the next community for a better job.
[00:25:05.550]So what people said is
[00:25:06.720]we wanna be part of a peer learning community.
[00:25:09.810]And we've got that started.
[00:25:12.090]And they said we think what needs to happen is instead
[00:25:16.080]of trying to find enough people in a community
[00:25:18.810]like Lynch to do leader development,
[00:25:21.300]that you should do a regional approach
[00:25:23.490]that has some community components to it,
[00:25:27.180]some regional components to it,
[00:25:29.100]has some in-person and some Zoom.
[00:25:33.660]And they said we need to figure out how to partner better
[00:25:36.240]with organizations around leadership.
[00:25:38.580]And we want the PK through 12 leadership
[00:25:42.330]across the curriculum initiative to get operating.
[00:25:47.100]And then we have something called SourceLink.
[00:25:48.660]It's out of University of Nebraska Omaha,
[00:25:51.000]which is online directory of business services.
[00:25:55.380]They were saying there should be something like that
[00:25:57.323]for community leadership or community services.
[00:26:02.100]And then web-based interactive sessions.
[00:26:05.040]Maybe we should have a state leadership commission
[00:26:08.040]that works to connect all the dots.
[00:26:11.614]So those are the ideas that came out of it.
[00:26:16.200]So that's what we're doing with leadership.
[00:26:19.770]Economic development,
[00:26:21.690]Sean Caskey in Kearney has a EDA grant
[00:26:25.290]and that is around entrepreneurial ecosystem and e-coaching.
[00:26:30.330]So at the end of last June, they had funded support
[00:26:35.250]for entrepreneurship coaches in three regions,
[00:26:39.480]reached 168 businesses, engaged with 97 of them.
[00:26:43.950]46 of them increased their full-time employment,
[00:26:47.610]46 increased their part-time employment,
[00:26:50.460]294 new products added,
[00:26:53.730]they're selling in 171 new markets,
[00:26:57.090]and 139 investments in employee training.
[00:27:00.780]And they leveraged over $12 million in investment.
[00:27:05.160]So that's rural Nebraska.
[00:27:09.000]There's money being leveraged there.
[00:27:10.830]There's people willing to invest.
[00:27:12.960]There's things happening there.
[00:27:14.970]We need to find ways to support that infrastructure.
[00:27:18.570]So we can do more of that.
[00:27:23.610]We also have an initiative on Latinx business development.
[00:27:28.560]So since it started in 2016,
[00:27:32.220]676 startups, and I'll bet you're all saying,
[00:27:36.157]"Oh, I'll bet there were a lot of restaurants in that."
[00:27:39.690]But the largest portion
[00:27:41.070]of those businesses was in construction
[00:27:43.350]and remodeling.
[00:27:46.440]Extension programs, workshops,
[00:27:48.930]893 participants, 11 communities,
[00:27:53.940]three locations, food handler class,
[00:27:57.600]115 hours of training, 893 participants.
[00:28:02.010]So there's a lot of interest in our immigrant community
[00:28:04.920]in being active in business development
[00:28:07.230]and community development.
[00:28:08.970]Some of the other things they've done
[00:28:10.440]is the 4th Street project in Grand Island.
[00:28:13.590]So they created a bid.
[00:28:16.320]Collaborations and partnerships with different organizations
[00:28:20.190]and working on the disaster preparedness,
[00:28:22.860]making sure that those materials are translated in Spanish.
[00:28:27.450]We have also, as a part of another grant,
[00:28:30.300]added bilingual food system specialists
[00:28:36.900]working with Latino farmers
[00:28:39.240]and food businesses.
[00:28:43.590]Related to economic development,
[00:28:45.360]a lot of rural communities look at tourism
[00:28:47.520]as a way to develop their economy.
[00:28:50.910]And so one of the current projects
[00:28:54.703]is USDA funded in Knox County
[00:28:57.180]looking at trying to do a regional tourism approach.
[00:29:02.250]They have people that go there
[00:29:03.390]for the lakes and the river.
[00:29:05.400]How do we expand that to get more people there
[00:29:10.410]to do more things?
[00:29:11.430]So doing asset mapping,
[00:29:13.530]research on who comes and why,
[00:29:16.140]bringing in regional tourism partners,
[00:29:18.300]and also partnering with faculty and planning.
[00:29:21.090]And we have a number of students involved
[00:29:23.190]in that project as well.
[00:29:27.510]And then here's a big one.
[00:29:30.960]We were talking earlier about cooperative agreements
[00:29:33.720]with USDA and how much paperwork that is.
[00:29:37.841]So this is the Heartland Regional Business Center
[00:29:39.960]and the focus is to coordinate food business
[00:29:44.940]support systems across five states.
[00:29:48.090]USDA is interested in investing in this for two reasons.
[00:29:52.290]One, Covid showed us that our food system
[00:29:55.890]is not as reliable and resilient as it should be.
[00:30:00.960]And secondly, USDA knows they need
[00:30:04.260]to get better at reaching out
[00:30:05.760]to different types of populations, different groups,
[00:30:09.690]different kinds of growers.
[00:30:10.920]So that's part of what we're doing here
[00:30:13.590]is trying to get folks together and coordinate.
[00:30:18.570]We did have a meeting with folks
[00:30:20.340]in Columbus a couple weeks ago,
[00:30:24.510]and some of you that work
[00:30:26.820]with producers probably have heard this too
[00:30:29.340]where people say, "I called the person
[00:30:32.580]that everybody said would know the answer
[00:30:34.830]and then they said, 'Well I know this part of it,
[00:30:38.340]but I don't really know that part of it.
[00:30:39.990]So you need to call this person.'"
[00:30:42.090]And they would say sometimes it was sixth,
[00:30:44.580]seventh, eighth phone call
[00:30:46.710]before they would get the answer they needed around
[00:30:51.360]whether it's a production problem or value-added question
[00:30:55.530]or business development question.
[00:30:57.600]So how do we do a better job
[00:30:59.160]of coordinating those resources?
[00:31:01.470]Is it possible to create a one-stop shop approach
[00:31:05.010]so we know who's doing stuff,
[00:31:08.280]so we can tell producers who's actually answering
[00:31:11.910]what kind of questions.
[00:31:16.350]We have 12 key partners on that and 33 collaborators.
[00:31:20.940]So part of it is a little bit like herding cats.
[00:31:28.740]So part of what that job is
[00:31:30.330]to map the food system provider network,
[00:31:33.030]help people understand who's out there
[00:31:35.550]they can share resources with.
[00:31:37.380]And we'll be sponsoring a training
[00:31:40.860]next week on Train the Trainer
[00:31:44.010]on the market ready curriculum.
[00:31:45.780]So people that are working with producers
[00:31:48.060]or people who want to do a value added product,
[00:31:52.680]and they got this great idea,
[00:31:54.930]but they just don't know how to get it into a store.
[00:31:58.710]That's a curriculum that'll help us
[00:32:01.410]better help them do that.
[00:32:03.420]And then the big thing about this
[00:32:06.360]that everybody is paying a lot of attention to
[00:32:08.670]is out of that 25 million,
[00:32:10.560]there's about 11 million that'll go into grants.
[00:32:14.160]So people wanna know who's gonna get that money, right?
[00:32:18.787]And we're working with the USDA
[00:32:21.000]on what that's gonna look like.
[00:32:22.560]We think there's gonna be two things that are possible.
[00:32:26.400]One will be we'll have some programs.
[00:32:30.600]They could be programs related to food safety.
[00:32:33.750]They could be connected to the food processing center.
[00:32:36.990]They could be connected to market ready
[00:32:38.970]and market maker
[00:32:42.600]where people complete the training
[00:32:44.490]and then they have access to a non-competitive grant
[00:32:47.010]to implement their plan.
[00:32:48.720]And then there'll be competitive grants for businesses
[00:32:51.210]that have been in business for at least one year.
[00:32:59.520]And they'll be up to $75,000 we think.
[00:33:07.433]Some of you may end up working with people
[00:33:10.650]for whom this would be of interest.
[00:33:16.470]The RPN hub also includes the Extension programs
[00:33:20.760]to tribal nations and indigenous people.
[00:33:24.720]Got a project with Omaha putting in a hydroponics plant
[00:33:28.650]and we'll be using the Nebraska Indian Community College
[00:33:34.380]in Macy as the training location for that
[00:33:38.010]because they have a hydroponics facility there.
[00:33:41.820]There's some opportunities
[00:33:42.960]to expand funding opportunities in Walthill
[00:33:46.710]around the new museum there.
[00:33:49.200]There's an east campus,
[00:33:50.460]some of you may know the project Ted's doing on East campus
[00:33:54.000]with gardening, and then the outreach to high schools
[00:33:57.960]for indigenous young people.
[00:34:00.060]And Ted is also one of those people
[00:34:02.580]that always gets called up
[00:34:03.870]and says, "Will you be on this grant with us?"
[00:34:06.728]Because we have to have an underrepresented group.
[00:34:08.970]So we connect with a lot of people in that way.
[00:34:15.750]And then some of you may be familiar
[00:34:18.270]with the Nebraska Cooperative Center.
[00:34:22.290]Yeah, no?
[00:34:24.240]So cooperatives are something that
[00:34:27.633]have become really important in rural America.
[00:34:29.280]We have a lot of grocery stores in rural America
[00:34:31.680]that now are cooperatives.
[00:34:34.140]Food hubs are normally set up as cooperatives.
[00:34:37.350]There's some efforts in taking some of those nursing homes
[00:34:41.370]that have been closed down
[00:34:42.690]and turning them into cooperatives.
[00:34:45.214]So those services will still be available
[00:34:47.130]in rural Nebraska.
[00:34:49.350]They provide training, technical assistance,
[00:34:52.980]and the Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaign.
[00:34:57.840]This is an example of a ripple effect map
[00:35:00.180]we did of one of the cooperative grocery stores.
[00:35:03.300]This is in Emerson Post 60,
[00:35:07.140]when we talked to them about
[00:35:08.430]how is this grocery store making a difference for you,
[00:35:11.580]they talked about increasing healthy options for elders.
[00:35:15.870]They talked about the fact that the elders
[00:35:18.120]walk to the grocery store
[00:35:19.920]or it's a short ride to the grocery store.
[00:35:22.710]The grocery store has a partnership with the school.
[00:35:25.800]So when they come to the grocery store,
[00:35:27.990]they're usually interacting with young people.
[00:35:30.240]So there's some real interesting
[00:35:31.590]intergenerational things going on there.
[00:35:35.414]This cooperative grocery store said,
[00:35:36.487]"Hmm, this is really interesting.
[00:35:40.590]I could become a hub for other businesses in town
[00:35:44.910]so I can order food for them, caterers,
[00:35:48.090]other stores, restaurants.
[00:35:51.600]And then when we order together,
[00:35:54.480]we'll get a better price
[00:35:57.990]and we can work together to expand each other's business."
[00:36:01.830]So this has become kind of a spark plug
[00:36:04.650]for business development.
[00:36:07.170]People also said
[00:36:10.980]success makes people more willing to try.
[00:36:14.490]So the grocery stores become a way
[00:36:16.770]of saying you can get it done in Emerson,
[00:36:19.830]we are a community
[00:36:21.090]where people come together to support each other.
[00:36:26.100]It's like a domino except we're not falling down,
[00:36:29.730]we're creating new things.
[00:36:32.665]But grocery stores make a difference.
[00:36:36.407]And then we just got funded
[00:36:38.730]with the EPSCoRE Track II project.
[00:36:42.864]It's looking at building climate capacity
[00:36:46.980]in rural communities.
[00:36:48.450]It's Oklahoma, Louisiana, Nebraska.
[00:36:50.880]We do have a 1890, three 1862s,
[00:36:54.660]and a couple of state colleges
[00:36:56.850]involved in that.
[00:36:58.050]May possibly add a 1996 to to it, 1992 to it.
[00:37:04.230]So that would be
[00:37:05.820]the historically Black and the tribal colleges.
[00:37:11.670]And one of that is to engage
[00:37:13.650]with community-based learning lab
[00:37:16.380]as part of the research team.
[00:37:17.700]So a lot of times when we think about how do you engage
[00:37:20.490]with community, we say,
[00:37:21.547]"Oh, we're gonna do all this research on campus.
[00:37:23.580]We're gonna go to community and tell them what we found
[00:37:25.860]and then we'll help them figure out what to do with it."
[00:37:29.130]This is the idea of bringing the community in
[00:37:31.560]at the beginning of the research project.
[00:37:33.870]So the questions we look at about
[00:37:37.740]how this works in a community are part
[00:37:40.050]of the overall project.
[00:37:41.670]Aim two is to build the science model.
[00:37:45.570]Aim three is to work with the living lab to plan
[00:37:48.240]for resilience in that community.
[00:37:50.430]And aim four, like all NSF grants is around,
[00:37:54.420]how do we involve young people,
[00:37:59.849]early career faculty to train
[00:38:02.460]the new generation of scientists.
[00:38:06.210]And I want to also mention, I mentioned mental health before
[00:38:10.380]and kind of think about, that's not Extension's job,
[00:38:14.580]that's the healthcare's job.
[00:38:17.310]But Extension across the country is getting more involved
[00:38:19.830]in mental health substance use disorder
[00:38:22.230]because it's a community problem.
[00:38:24.690]If we look at what's gonna determine how healthy you are,
[00:38:30.780]is it your genetics or is it your zip code?
[00:38:34.080]Well your zip code has more to do than your genetics.
[00:38:38.010]We can change what's going on in that zip code.
[00:38:41.400]Rural Nebraska has a lot of communities
[00:38:46.080]that fall on this least healthy outcomes
[00:38:49.620]and least healthy factors.
[00:38:54.510]There's some research that has referred
[00:38:56.040]to this kind of grouping of data
[00:38:58.440]that seems to correlate around attitudes
[00:39:01.470]for the future like we talked about earlier
[00:39:06.600]and different kinds of health outcomes,
[00:39:09.690]unemployment type of industry.
[00:39:14.937]This is one of counties in Nebraska.
[00:39:17.730]Juvenile refs, 50 compared to the state.
[00:39:21.450]This is state and this is national 21 average.
[00:39:25.350]Car crashes, suicide, injury deaths, those are all higher.
[00:39:31.590]Gender pay gap is lower.
[00:39:35.880]Tells you something about the industry there, right?
[00:39:39.540]Lower, screening, vaccinations, higher,
[00:39:43.140]teen birth, obesity, smoking.
[00:39:46.620]That's what the deaths of despair look like.
[00:39:48.900]Those are all things that have to do with how we interact
[00:39:51.660]with each other,
[00:39:52.800]what kind of services we offer in our community,
[00:39:55.710]and how people learn about being healthy.
[00:40:02.580]And I did say the Rural Prosperity Nebraska Hub
[00:40:07.230]includes education.
[00:40:08.820]So one of the projects we've had over the last 10 years
[00:40:12.242]is rural Fellows.
[00:40:13.530]Rural Fellows, been 10 years in operation.
[00:40:16.230]It's on hiatus this year.
[00:40:17.730]So we can do some reflection and planning, over time,
[00:40:22.830]it's connected 176 students to 76 communities
[00:40:26.880]to create community change.
[00:40:30.510]And the positive story here is
[00:40:34.080]these students come in, they love the opportunity
[00:40:36.930]to be in rural Nebraska,
[00:40:38.580]and the community has these projects
[00:40:41.550]that nobody ever has the time to do,
[00:40:43.230]but they're so important.
[00:40:45.810]Students jump into it and as a result,
[00:40:48.570]they say well, in one community,
[00:40:50.940]they said because somebody had the time
[00:40:54.300]to do the mental health awareness campaign,
[00:40:57.690]our mental health awareness programs have really expanded.
[00:41:00.870]Because somebody had the time to do the website,
[00:41:03.870]we've got all these new things
[00:41:04.703]that are happening in these communities.
[00:41:06.660]So lots of interesting ways about how the right student
[00:41:10.770]with the right project can make
[00:41:13.260]a major difference in the community.
[00:41:14.970]And the student can see, if I live in rural Nebraska,
[00:41:18.240]I can make a difference.
[00:41:19.830]People in the community know who I am. They thank me.
[00:41:26.139]And I wanted to just mention
[00:41:27.450]that when I interviewed for this job,
[00:41:30.570]the student that gave me the tour was in precision ag.
[00:41:34.410]So maybe she took some courses with you.
[00:41:36.567]And I asked her,
[00:41:37.400]"What are you gonna do when you graduate in six months?"
[00:41:40.350]She said, "I don't know, I've been looking for jobs,
[00:41:43.620]but I don't think there's anything in Lincoln.
[00:41:47.490]Maybe I'll have to go to Omaha."
[00:41:49.740]That night, part of my interview was go to Columbus
[00:41:53.580]and talk to community leaders there.
[00:41:55.710]They said, "We're desperate for people
[00:41:58.860]with technology skills."
[00:42:01.170]Come back and say to her,
[00:42:02.377]"Would you consider going to Columbus?"
[00:42:04.447]"Oh yeah, I'm from a small town right next to it."
[00:42:08.797]"Here's the phone number, they want you."
[00:42:11.730]How do we build that connection in instead of it happening
[00:42:15.090]by chance?
[00:42:16.650]Those communities need these kids.
[00:42:19.260]Kids have the skills they need. So what next?
[00:42:23.340]Lots of opportunities here around health, retaining youth,
[00:42:26.580]building stronger networks
[00:42:27.900]between researchers and Extension.
[00:42:30.270]And always keep learning together
[00:42:32.310]so we can do more and better for Nebraska.
[00:42:36.150]Questions, comments?
[00:42:48.150]That was very interesting.
[00:42:50.820]My question pertains to when you do your polls,
[00:42:54.630]do you have a way to categorize whether these
[00:43:01.016]people who respond live on a farm,
[00:43:02.490]are involved in a business in town,
[00:43:07.384]or maybe those who are consultants to the farmers?
[00:43:11.910]Hmm, I don't think we'd be able to tease out consultants,
[00:43:15.690]but we do ask about employment.
[00:43:18.990]Okay. Another question.
[00:43:22.290]You mentioned something about
[00:43:23.790]when you go into a community,
[00:43:26.936]you try to pull these people together
[00:43:28.650]and how difficult is it to get them
[00:43:33.000]to identify a need or two?
[00:43:39.570]Is that a problem to get them to communicate
[00:43:42.810]among themselves and then decide,
[00:43:46.350]yeah, this is something we want to go for?
[00:43:49.260]So usually when they ask somebody from UNL
[00:43:52.710]to come in, there's a concern that's already there.
[00:43:56.880]It is harder to get the communities
[00:43:59.100]to work together now than it was five years ago.
[00:44:02.130]And it is harder to get a lot of people
[00:44:04.350]to come to a community planning meeting
[00:44:06.150]unless it's something real controversial.
[00:44:07.830]Then everybody wants to come
[00:44:09.090]and yell at each other, which is not very productive.
[00:44:14.520]And so one of the things we do is really work
[00:44:17.040]with people on the facilitation skills
[00:44:18.990]and the meeting design
[00:44:20.430]that can eliminate some of those kind of things.
[00:44:22.530]But I mean there's what,
[00:44:25.398]467 communities in Nebraska?
[00:44:29.370]No, 500 and something communities in Nebraska.
[00:44:33.450]So we're not gonna go to a community
[00:44:35.700]and say, "Oh, can we help you get somebody together?"
[00:44:38.610]Because we've got communities that are knocking on our door
[00:44:41.220]that says, "Can you help us with this?"
[00:44:44.610]And one of the things we think is really important
[00:44:47.820]is kind of think about that normal curve of dissemination.
[00:44:53.220]You have your early innovators and early adapters
[00:44:56.610]and work with them, then the communities next door will say,
[00:44:59.677]"Oh, I wanna do more like that."
[00:45:02.760]They got some businesses there.
[00:45:04.731]Their downtown, the stores are not empty anymore.
[00:45:10.050]So then people will see some success
[00:45:12.270]and then they'll believe that it's possible
[00:45:14.970]for them to be successful too.
[00:45:16.920]So we wanna really foster that wave of,
[00:45:21.450]yeah, you can do it, there's possibilities here.
[00:45:29.220]Thank you Emery
[00:45:30.053]for this informative seminar.
[00:45:33.540]My question relates to workforce.
[00:45:35.910]I was at a workshop last fall
[00:45:39.390]and the individual is part
[00:45:42.840]of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce
[00:45:45.600]who also run for governorship a few years ago.
[00:45:49.650]But the workforce point was about bringing immigrants
[00:45:53.700]from other places and settling them in Nebraska,
[00:45:57.930]and that's the advocacy that was happening.
[00:46:00.579]And there was a lot of back and forth conversation
[00:46:03.570]with the audience.
[00:46:04.440]But I'm wondering
[00:46:05.550]how much RPN is involved in this conversation
[00:46:08.970]and what you see as return on investment,
[00:46:13.800]but also on understanding how new families
[00:46:17.880]can really thrive in rural communities.
[00:46:24.360]So it is true that the Nebraska Chamber
[00:46:26.610]and also the Nebraska Department of Economic Development
[00:46:31.860]are both really interested
[00:46:33.540]in how immigrants can help address the declining population
[00:46:37.290]and the workforce shortage.
[00:46:38.820]We also know that immigrants
[00:46:42.660]increase economic activity,
[00:46:44.580]are more likely to start businesses and create jobs.
[00:46:49.121]And there's some preliminary evidence
[00:46:50.460]that immigrants increase the value
[00:46:52.530]of housing stock in a rural community
[00:46:55.050]because they're more willing to take on a fixer-upper
[00:46:58.560]that might have been sitting there
[00:46:59.970]for five years and fix it up.
[00:47:02.100]So there's some real positives to it.
[00:47:05.280]We have communities that welcome those opportunities
[00:47:08.130]and we have communities that are afraid
[00:47:12.300]of having people who are different in their community.
[00:47:15.330]And again, we have to work with the willing
[00:47:20.430]where the willing are interested.
[00:47:24.210]RPN has done leadership development,
[00:47:26.190]bringing people from different communities together.
[00:47:28.590]They've done planning efforts
[00:47:30.450]that bring communities together.
[00:47:32.190]We try really hard and occasionally a community will come
[00:47:35.190]and say "We really want some help with this planning
[00:47:38.520]because we need to do something about our downtown."
[00:47:41.850]That's a big question. Our downtown is falling apart.
[00:47:45.150]So we'll go there and they'll be five white men over 60
[00:47:50.340]and we'll say to them,
[00:47:51.727]"In order to really have this conversation,
[00:47:54.270]we need to have some different voices in the room.
[00:47:57.030]We really appreciate your interest in trying
[00:47:59.430]to get this community going.
[00:48:02.400]But to get this community going,
[00:48:04.830]we need people from different parts of the community
[00:48:09.390]to be part of that conversation."
[00:48:11.370]Some people are willing to do that, some people aren't.
[00:48:16.260]But we know where you bring the most voices
[00:48:19.110]to the table in a community development project,
[00:48:22.200]you get the most done.
[00:48:24.180]Not only do you get new and different ideas,
[00:48:27.150]you learn about different resources,
[00:48:29.190]but then there's no more bodies to do the work.
[00:48:39.330]Recently on television,
[00:48:40.740]there have been the stations will feature
[00:48:45.450]a city or a town and right now they're featuring Geneva.
[00:48:49.860]In the past they featured O'Neill, Columbus,
[00:48:52.770]these other towns.
[00:48:55.003]And do any of these towns
[00:48:57.420]or the people in those towns come to you
[00:48:59.730]and say, "How can we we work to learn
[00:49:06.724]or make for better housing, better business communities?"
[00:49:10.860]Do you become involved?
[00:49:13.080]Well typically they would go
[00:49:14.790]to the county Extension office
[00:49:16.470]and the county Extension office would refer them
[00:49:18.780]to whoever was doing that kind of programming.
[00:49:21.480]But we do help with economic development.
[00:49:23.430]We have a program called ECAP
[00:49:25.260]that takes community through a planning process.
[00:49:29.070]So we don't do a lot with housing.
[00:49:34.551]NIFA has a effort that's going on now,
[00:49:38.280]they're building out a toolkit
[00:49:39.720]and they're gonna be doing outreach to communities
[00:49:42.120]to help them figure out how to address
[00:49:45.300]some of the housing challenges.
[00:49:46.770]And we've been part of that Housing Council.
[00:49:51.780]Did you have a question or? Oh, there's a question there.
[00:49:57.240]Does small Latino farmers can participate in the training
[00:50:01.530]or also be part of Heartland Food Center Committee
[00:50:06.240]as a volunteer?
[00:50:08.400]Sure. Just contact us.
[00:50:11.430]The website is the Heartland Regional Food Business Center.
[00:50:15.990]Or you can probably contact your county Extension agent
[00:50:19.950]and they can connect you up with us.
[00:50:27.540]Very interesting.
[00:50:29.430]I would ask you a question.
[00:50:32.700]Lots of towns big and small within Nebraska
[00:50:36.630]have some event during the year
[00:50:40.140]that they're highlighted.
[00:50:42.570]You know about those.
[00:50:45.000]One of the things, and this is purely observational,
[00:50:49.740]but one of the things that I see county fair time
[00:50:55.410]in Nebraska,
[00:50:56.970]you will see more campers and farmers and whatever
[00:51:03.090]congregate at that time.
[00:51:05.160]And I think part of it as you already alluded to
[00:51:07.980]was FFA and 4H.
[00:51:10.530]But just that camaraderie quote unquote
[00:51:15.000]that generates from that kind of event.
[00:51:18.270]And I haven't been all over the state
[00:51:20.910]for all the county fairs,
[00:51:22.320]but ones that I've encountered
[00:51:24.930]and seen during their time of operation,
[00:51:28.920]there's a lot of community participation
[00:51:36.660]in that sort of an event.
[00:51:39.030]And that's over and above the various specific days
[00:51:43.500]that other towns in that county might have
[00:51:46.800]as their celebration event or whatever.
[00:51:50.730]So there's exposure there, resources there, interests there.
[00:51:56.730]It seems like to me that I appreciate you folks
[00:52:01.200]trying to expand on that and develop that
[00:52:07.174]and utilize that to help not only
[00:52:10.860]that particular community, but neighboring communities also.
[00:52:15.450]Just kind of raise that question or issue with you.
[00:52:19.470]How much effort has gone into trying
[00:52:23.130]to exploit community events like that?
[00:52:28.630]Well the communities that have participated
[00:52:31.510]in the Marketing Your Hometown project in Nebraska,
[00:52:35.160]a lot of them use those events to highlight,
[00:52:38.430]here are the business opportunities in this community,
[00:52:41.070]or if you're gonna come to the county fair,
[00:52:43.080]stay another day and here's the other things you can do.
[00:52:45.840]So you can really use it to both increase,
[00:52:49.320]expand the tourism income,
[00:52:51.990]job possibilities related to that.
[00:52:53.940]But you can also look at it as
[00:52:55.950]maybe there's somebody that's looking.
[00:52:59.420]We have two types of people
[00:53:01.020]that really wanna come back to Nebraska.
[00:53:03.300]One is, you know, I'm in a big city,
[00:53:06.240]but now I'm starting a family
[00:53:07.650]and I really want my kids to have the experience I had,
[00:53:11.550]but I don't know how I can make a living there.
[00:53:13.800]So I come to the county fair
[00:53:16.050]and there's a place where I can learn about
[00:53:18.300]growing my own business there
[00:53:19.740]or what the jobs are in that area.
[00:53:24.175]And then the people who are like 50 years old
[00:53:25.710]and they're saying, "I'm done with the traffic
[00:53:27.810]and everything, can I transition back to where I came from?
[00:53:31.680]What are the possibilities there?"
[00:53:33.510]So depending on the community,
[00:53:35.940]they have an opportunity to spend a little bit of time
[00:53:38.400]and really create the marketing pitch,
[00:53:42.840]the sales pitch for why you should think about coming home.
[00:53:48.570]And some places have been really successful with that.
[00:54:04.142]I think this is actually pretty good.
[00:54:05.820]Kind of the looking thing
[00:54:06.840]what's available throughout Nebraska,
[00:54:09.060]even I was kind of fortunate to get connected
[00:54:11.760]with people in North Platte, in Columbus,
[00:54:13.800]and a lot of entrepreneurs
[00:54:15.690]or whatever scale someone would be interested to go.
[00:54:19.920]But one of the things,
[00:54:20.753]how people learn about those opportunities,
[00:54:22.680]it's difficult to start from the beginning
[00:54:25.470]and they get to go with someone like (indistinct) idea,
[00:54:28.260]I really like that one.
[00:54:29.550]But how we can get them engaged there,
[00:54:31.290]how they can be volunteers is one of the questions
[00:54:34.230]that someone asked already.
[00:54:35.970]How they can know about this opportunity.
[00:54:37.590]That's kind of the big point.
[00:54:39.030]Getting people's attention
[00:54:40.500]in today's social media world is a bit of a challenge.
[00:54:44.160]But we do try to run the stories of, you know,
[00:54:46.650]this is what it looks like if you do this kind of work
[00:54:49.530]and local press.
[00:54:51.540]We do have an active social media page
[00:54:53.820]and then we have our Creating Entrepreneurial Communities
[00:54:58.080]conference every year,
[00:54:59.160]we bring people from different communities together,
[00:55:01.290]share those successes, talk about what's possible.
[00:55:04.260]So we try to get the word out as much as possible.
[00:55:06.780]And hopefully people know
[00:55:10.380]that the Extension office should be
[00:55:12.971]a place to go when you have a question.
[00:55:15.210]But yeah, and interestingly,
[00:55:17.422]we were talking earlier, when I was in Hungary, Slovakia,
[00:55:22.170]they were talking about bringing people
[00:55:24.840]who had left Hungary in '56
[00:55:27.360]bringing their families back as a tourism strategy.
[00:55:30.510]So kind of the same thing, returning to your roots.
[00:55:41.880]I just have a comment
[00:55:43.320]mostly because I grew up in rural Iowa
[00:55:45.540]and obviously I live in Lincoln now as faculty here,
[00:55:50.580]but I just really appreciate all that you do
[00:55:54.060]because you actually managed to make me homesick
[00:55:56.280]for rural Iowa today, which doesn't happen that often,
[00:56:00.480]but I think that's something that for those of us
[00:56:03.930]who are here in agronomy and horticulture,
[00:56:05.730]thinking about how we train leaders
[00:56:08.220]that may be going back to the community,
[00:56:11.220]whether in our classes
[00:56:13.020]or our research programs that
[00:56:16.464]it's also important to teach those leadership skills
[00:56:19.230]wherever we can because I'm a wheat breeder.
[00:56:23.340]The reason I'm a public wheat breeder is
[00:56:25.860]because I can have a greater impact on rural communities
[00:56:29.010]than I could as a private industry breeder.
[00:56:34.052]So I do take that really seriously in my own research
[00:56:36.240]and my own educating the next generation
[00:56:40.020]of students and leaders.
[00:56:42.030]So I appreciate learning about your work
[00:56:45.840]and thinking about how it could tie in
[00:56:48.270]with some of the things I do in the future.
[00:56:50.790]And Iowa Extension is great. They're great colleagues.
[00:56:57.930]So thank you Dr. Emery--
[00:57:00.210]Thank you.
[00:57:01.320]And it was a great presentation.
[00:57:04.262](applause)

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Rural Prosperity Nebraska: Connecting Research and Practice to Rural Community Vitality

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