One of the goals in the Strategic Plan was to provide opportunities for people to promote tourism in the Sisseton area. On of the ways that we can build tourism is to have friendly, knowledgeable people working in our local businesses. A training was recently offered for high school students to learn more about serving the public.
We all want Sisseton to be an attractive, welcoming place. One of the Spring Sweep goals is to work on combating crime and graffiti. Several representatives of the city, city police department, probation officers, and concerned citizens have been meeting to come up with plans to help home and business owners deal with the problem of graffiti in our community.
Fresh Air Week is coming up! Horizons is working with the local radio station, KBWS to provide a week worth of radio ads to promote community pride, good attitudes and to continue the clean up efforts around town. The radio spots will also highlight some of the great assets that Sisseton has including parks, cultural attractions, businesses and the great people who call this place home.
Sisseton was part of the Design:SD project. Here’s some background from their website:
Design South Dakota is a newway to help rural communities create a better future by design. In April, 2008, a team of design and community development professionals will spend two intense days (called a design “charrette”) working with the people in the Sisseton, SD region to gather and illustrate local ideas. The event will help Sisseton to build a shared vision for the future, and to demonstrate ways to turn those ideas into reality in their regional community.
The completed concept boards will be delivered to the community soon and will probably be displayed somewhere in the community. More information to come…
Paint South Dakota is a community service program provided by the South Dakota Housing Development Authority. Each year community groups are encouraged to apply for the grant project. SDHDA provides primer and paint and a local community group provides the volunteer labor to paint the house. People can self nominate or can be chosen by a local group to participate. The requirements are:
1. The Nominee must own and currently live in the home to be painted. It cannot be a business, rental house, contain rental units or property used for other purposes besides a primary residence.
2. The Nominee must need their home repainted and would otherwise not be able to paint the house on their own due to financial or physical difficulty.
A group from Grace Lutheran Church will be painting a house in Sisseton this year. For more information or to get involved, contact Jeff Gregg.
The idea for the swap is to keep good, usable items out of the land fill and also to provide people in our community with free items that they can make use of. Lots of people were able to get rid of their C.R.U.D! (That’s Community Recycling of Usable Discards!)
This first swap was real success with 200+ items swapped and just a few things left over! There was everything from A to Z that people brought to swap including beds and bed frames, computers and scanners, bicycles, chairs, toilets, carpets, Christmas decorations, child booster and car seats and many other things! It’s amazing what people brought and what other people needed. It was a great event and more may be planned in the future.
Thanks to all who participated in the Swap, and thanks to Lindy Staub and the Sisseton Swimming Pool for all their help in arranging the event and providing the space for the swap.
Several community residents came together over a two-day period to help clean up Sisseton as part of the Spring Sweep. Several dumpsters, truck beds and trailers were filled with trash, trees and brush from the Cedar Park area and around the community.
Over 70 people were involved with the clean up including individuals and members of several community groups, such a 4-H Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Church groups.Thanks to all who helped with this community clean up!
Everyone who participated in the clean up received a $4 gift certificate from Horizons to a local restaurant. Garbage bags for the clean up were provided by Dakota Western Corporation at Agency Village. A big thanks to them for this donation!
Horizons has partnered with the A & C Variety store to provide community residents with brooms and rakes at a discounted price. The project is meant to encourage people to take pride in their community and to promote shopping locally. Community members were encouraged to stop by A & C and pick up a broom or rake for just $2. We’ve already seen some community members out and about using their red handled brooms! Each person also received information about the Horizons projects and the action ideas being planned for the future to make Sisseton a great place for all its residents.
A BIG THANKS!to the folks at A & C for partnering with us to make this event a success!
Over 120 brooms will be delivered to Sisseton businesses as a way to say thanks for keeping Sisseton a clean, great place to live. The campaign is to encourage community businesses to take pride in their community and to lend a helping hand to make the community a clean, appealing place for the residents. We’ve heard a lot of good feedback from business owners, who were excited to accept the brooms and were grateful to be included as a valuable member of the community. The broms were provided as part fo the Horizons project and were the kick off to the 6 week Spring Sweep. The brooms are still being delivered, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, don’t worry the Horizons group is still working.
Plans are being made for a 6 week community clean up effort in Sisseton. Each week will focus in on a different community action to help clean up the community and get people thinking about being involved and building community pride. The tentative projects include:
Week 1: Kick-Off
1. Brooms for Businesses to promote a clean sweep.
2. Brooms, Rakes and Recycle Bins available at A&C Variety at a discounted price to promote clean up and shopping downtown.
3. Coordinate with parks board, older youth and adults to clear walking trail area.
4. Begin recycling efforts
5. Possibly hold kick-off event
Week 2: Community Clean Up
1. Set up collection sites for electronic recycling
2. Set up area for Sisseton Swap - were people bring items (not clothing) that they no longer need/want. Later in the campaign it will be open for people to take what they need/want.
3. Coordinate with various youth groups/organizations and volunteers to pick up trash on streets, parks & hwy 10. We will need garbage bags and gloves. Volunteers would be given a beverage and certificate to use at local business for a treat.
Week 3: Fresh Air - promote positive attitudes
1. Radio ad campaign re: community pride, keep it clean, etc.
2. Promote walking, use of city parks, outdoor activities
3. Promote Free Family Fun Events - multi-cultural
Week 4: Community Swap
1. Open swap area for people to bring/take
2. Radio ads to promote recycling, reuse, reduce, repurpose
3. Add recycling bins and garbage cans around town
Week 5: Community Graffiti Combat Plan
1. Research possibility of treating brick buildings in downtown and area churches with chemical pre-wash to prevent graffiti
2. Purchase and Promote paint/supplies available at City Hall for local businesses to use when tagged.
3. Work with Police Department to create youth task force on gang and graffiti awareness
Week 6: City Wide Rummage Sales
1. Support project that is coordinated by Chamber
2. Promote programs/organizations that will take good used items that do not sell (instead of taking to the dump)
3. Host Celebration Event to evaluate (and celebrate) what we have accomplished and plan for future
To get involved contact Jennie or Sandi at 698-7642.
As part of the follow up to the LeadershipPlenty portion of the Horizons project, the Horizons group created a survey to give to people at the 2007 Horse and Buggy Days. The group also had some Horizons water bottles created by Glacial Lakes Bottling to use as a marketing tool and to thank people for filling out the survey. To read the results of the surveys collected, click the link below:
2007-sisseton-community-needs-assessment.pdf
The information gathered will be used to create an action plan for Sisseton in the next phase of the Horizons project.
A five member Resource Team came to Sisseton in April 2007 as part of the South Dakota Rural Development Council’s Community Assessment program. The team spent 3 days in Sisseton holding listening sessions with several community groups, all together about 150 people participated in the listening sessions. Sisseton was then given a report of the feedback from the listening sessions along with suggestions for action and several recources to help with technical assistance, funding and ideas of how othe communities have tackled the same issues.
Sisseton is working on the Community Assessment in tandem with the ongoing Horizons projects including Study Circles which occured in Winter 2007 and LeadershipPlenty in Summer 2007. To read a copy of the Community Assessment click the link below:
We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…
How will your community make decisions about seeking further resources to support its plans?
We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…
How can your community sustain the changes it has already made in its leadership?
We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…
What changes are you seeing in the way community leadership is exercised or carried out?
How is it different?
How has your community changed after LeadershipPlenty training?
In what ways have leadership skills been improved/enhanced?
What is different?
What changes are you seeing in the way leadership is carried out?
How decisions get made in your community?
What difference does the involvement of low income people make in community leadership?
We asked the Horizons participants to give us their feedback about how their community is changing in the areas of Poverty Reduction, Increasing Leadership and Community Change. The next few posts are the responses to questions about each of those topics…
How has your community leadership expanded?
In one instance: there is a new group taking over an activity that the committee from last year’s event resigned after several years on the activity. A new group of parents have stepped up to make sure the event will still succeed as it has in the past several years.
What changes have been made in who is now involved in leadership positions? For instance:
ü Are more people participating in leadership? The leaders seem to be the same people as there are always individuals that seem to want to help with several activities, but refuse to be “in charge.” There is more of co-leadership positions rather than one person in charge. It seems to spread out the responsibilities.
ü Are different kinds of people (representing more sectors or parts of the community) now participating in community leadership? I don’t really see more sectors at this point and time. There always has to be an issue of dispute that makes people get involved. They seem to think that is the time to get in and change things.
ü Does the community leadership reflect the community’s demographic profile? I don’t really see that it is represented on the percentage of the community’s demographics.
ü Are more low income people participating in community leadership? To some extent. It seems to be people of all income levels that are community minded.
What changes have been made in the way your community recruits and trains new leaders? The people always seem to think others will step up and be in charge as leaders and sometimes things will roll right along and then people lose interest and meetings just don’t seem to be a priority. Although they still want the end product to show results, but they are just “too busy” to get involved.
Sustains existing leaders? As I said before, it seems to be the same people that are the leaders and maybe part of the problem is that those people are so used to taking charge, that they just do it and don’t ask for help. It is probably just a matter of retraining those people too.
Written by Debbie Pageler
These are the beautiful water lilies that I wish grew in the Sisseton area. They actually might, but seeing that my mom and dad are the green thumbs in the family and definitely not me, I would never know.