Armour, SD

Local Extension Educator Roger Barrick asked me to post this employment opportunity on the blog. The person selected to fill this post will be based out out of Lake Andes and will cover Douglas, Charles Mix, Bon Homme and Hutchinson Counties.

Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Educator-Charles Mix County
Cooperative Extension
South Dakota State University
Would you like to help individuals of all ages and families improve their quality of life?  Are you interested in using the best research available to provide financial resource management training, health and wellness information and education regarding human development and family relations to families and adults of every age?   If so, the SD Cooperative Extension Service is looking for YOU!

RESPONSIBILITIES
Develop and deliver programming in the areas of financial resource management, human development and relations across the lifespan and nutrition, health and wellness to individuals and families according to identified needs. In conjunction with other agencies and organizations, provide connections to resources and provide education that will facilitate those being served to make informed choices regarding managing their resources, improving the quality of their life and overall health and well being.  Work with colleagues in the county, Field Education Unit, District and across the state to deliver programs relevant to the target audiences, using well researched programs and materials. Evaluate programs and services delivered to determine effectiveness and efficiency.  Serve as a connector to the land grant system for all individuals in the geographic area served.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
Bachelor’s degree in family and consumer science, home economics, human ecology or other related field.  Must be able to use a personal computer for basic word processing and email.  Ability to communicate well verbally and in writing is essential.  Must have a valid SD driver’s license and personal auto or be able to obtain both prior to beginning employment.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
Master’s degree in family and consumer sciences, home economics, human ecology or other related field and/or experience in teaching and research.

SALARY:
The salary is commensurate with education and experience.

UNIVERSITY/COMMUNITY:
SDSU is a land grant institution and the state’s largest institution of higher education.  The Cooperative Extension Service has a network of educators in nearly every county and specialists in Brookings and Rapid City, primarily.  This position is located in Lake Andes, SD. and serves a multi-county field education unit.

APPLICATION DEADLINE:  June 24, 2008

APPLICATION PROCESS:
SDSU accepts applications through an on-line employment site.  To apply, visit:  http://yourfuture.sdbor.edu, search by the position title, view the job announcement, and click on apply for this posting.  The system will guide you through the electronic application form.  The employment site will also require the attachment of a cover letter, resume, and reference page.  Please contact SDSU Human Resources at (605) 688-4128 if you require assistance with this process.

For questions on the position, contact Corrine Huber at 605-865-3205.

Our fund-raising efforts for the cabins are off to a great start with a $4,000 grant from the Armour Community Foundation and a $5,000 grant from Golden West Communications. We also have donation containers set up at businesses around town and we can see that the spare change is starting to add up!

In other news, the Horizons Cabin Committee traveled to the prison at Springfield Wednesday, April 9, to learn more about the cabins they are building for the state park. It was a great trip!

We were able to see the cabin-building operation and had a super visit with prison officials, who were very willing to share information about the cabins. They gave us a lot of great ideas for the Armour cabins, including some suggestions for building a little larger cabin (14′ x 24′) that has a loft for sleeping. The work done by the inmates is top-notch — they build everything from scratch, including the interior furnishings such as bunk beds and cabinets.

We met with the Armour Lions again and they are on board with the project. We are still uncertain whether we will build the cabins ourselves or have them built by another organization such as the prison. If we end up completing the construction on our own, we are hopeful that the prison officials we’ve been working with will assist us with blueprints and a list of building materials.

The movie “21″ did make it to town today, so we will be showing the movie as usual on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. We also have a matinee on Sunday at 3 p.m.

At the meeting it was decided to clean up around the Lake on May 6th at 5:00 pm. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts will be helping from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm with food and beverages served to them at 6:00 pm. The Community is also asked to help with the Clean-Up Project. Please bring your pick-ups, chain saws, weed eaters and man/women power : ) There will be food and beverages served following the clean-up. Thank you to everyone who help last year! We had such a great turn out we would love to see you there again this year!! If you have any questions please contact Dana Krull at 724-2459

7 p.m.
Tuesday, April 15
Armour Fire Hall

Please attend to participate in a planning session for Lake Alcazar for 2008. Plan to share your ideas, suggestions and comments.

Just a reminder — there is a Horizons meeting tonight (April 9) — 6 p.m. at the Fire Hall. All Horizons Committees are expected to provide a progress update.

Branding Your Community A Workshop for South Dakota Horizons– Milan Wall, Co-Director and a founder of the Heartland Center for Leadership Development was in Armour on Tusday, March 25^th. About 40 people from the Armour, Wagner, Artesian, Letcher, Woonsocket and Tyndall attended a presentation on Branding Your Community. I was very impressed by the fact that 18 people from Armour attended. We learned the importance of Branding. For example, can you think of facial tissue or gelatin without thinking of Kleenex or Jell-O? It is important to be clear about the difference between a brand and an image. A brand is carefully constructed and managed. An image, however, is much more fluid and in many cases, not controlled or created at all but simply evolved over time. Every community projects a certain image, positive or negative. A community image is really made up from the accumulated perceptions of residents and visitors over time. Every time people visit your town, they take away a community image as part of their experience. How do outsiders see your community? What do they recall after a visit? What do they say about their time in your community?

A community brand can be used to promote a town event, to create consumer loyalty and encourage folks to shop locally, or attract new businesses and families. The best use of a community brand is to make connections by representing the community values and special features.

We were split into groups where we had to opportunity to talk about our community. In doing this we discussed several questions. What do we want to be know for? What are our community’s key unique assets? How is our image connected to our key assets? Who are our customers? How can we get their attention? How can we move them from attention to action? We also discussed Tips for Branding, keep it simple, build recognition and exceed your promise.

This is just another tool that can be used to help fulfill our hopes and dreams for our community.

Category #4. Sustaining action and creating structural change around poverty

What structures have been changed that will enable your community to address poverty in the long-term?

Our participation in the Study Circles and Leadership Plenty helped us create specific goals to reduce poverty and led us to the formation of the committees that are currently working on completing the goals.

How will you monitor and evaluate your community’s progress in reducing poverty?

Our Strategic Plan outlines methods of evaluation for each goal. We’ve posted the plan online and you can download and read it by clicking the link on the right sidebar. One of the methods will be to interview members of the groups the various projects were trying to help to see if they felt the efforts were successful.

What community resources will be needed to sustain the community plan to reduce poverty?

All of our Horizons committees are vital to the success of our poverty reduction efforts. We need to sustain the level of action we’ve started and we need people to continue to participate in our new committees, plus maintain their involvement in our long-time groups such as Community Club. Our Horizons work has boosted attendance at our Community Club meetings. That’s a good trend and one that needs to continue.

What additional resources would make a difference in your community’s work to reduce poverty?

Money, obviously, is always a big help. We also need to continue to tap into partnerships — for example working with high school alumni.

Category #11. Taking action on community

In what ways is your community operating or working differently?

More people have stepped forward to take leadership goals. We’re also enjoying a greater level of participation because our projects have been well publicized and have broad support within the community.

In what new or expanded ways are people contributing to your community?

We learned a lot about each other’s talents during the Study Circles. That’s enabled us to better tap into what people are good at.

How are low income involved?

Everyone is invited to attend our Horizons meetings. While we are working on issues relating to poverty, there is a community feel to it. So, it’s really becoming things we do to be good neighbors.

What structures have been created or changed that will help your community?

Partnerships with groups like the school have made the most difference so far.

What new partnerships have been created , and what difference have they made for your community?

Well, the Parents-Teachers Together group, for example, has opened the door of communication at the school in a big way. The monthly PTT meetings have been well attended and the presentations have been routinely praised as very informative.

Have you learned anything about how nearby communities like yours are taking action to reduce poverty? Do you see any opportunities to exchange information or combine efforts in this work?

That’s where the blogs have been a big help. I think a lot of people are checking out what the other communities are doing and we get good comments from other towns on our blog. Thank you!

Many of us take it for granted that we can read this blog that I am posting. What if it was just a bunch of shapes that you were looking at and wondering “what does that say?”. Unfortunately in our society there are too many people who are unable to read & write. Many of them go through their life without other people realizing it. Illiteracy is a growing epidemic in our nation. 42 million American adults can’t read at all - another 50 million read at only fourth or fifth grade levels. This number of functionally illiterate adults increases by approx. 2.25 million each year.  That is a scary number but with 20 percent of graduating high school senior being functionally illiterate that number is not surprising.

What does this lead too? Well 70% of all prisoners in state and federal prisons are classified as illiterate. 70% of all people entering state correctional facilities have not completed high school and 14% have no high school education at all. 85% of juvenile offenders are classified as being functionally or marginally illiterate. 43% of people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty. WOW are those some scary statistics or what! Add to that a recent newspaper article stated that 1 in 100 people in our nation are in prison. So in a town of 800 that would figure out to 8 people in prison and with the 70% of them being illiterate that would equate to 5 of those people from our town being illiterate.

Or how about this tidbit of information. Do you know how they determine in SD how many jail cells will be needed in the future? They look at the 2nd grade reading level in our schools.

Yes reading is very important. It is the building block for a successful school experience. If you can’t read or read well all other subjects are going to suffer.

Parents, grandparents, and others one of the greatest gift and advantage you can give a child is to read to them from birth on. The knowledge they gain from that will serve them a life time. As they grow and learn to read let them read to you. It builds their skills and confidence. The next time you are buying a present for a youngster (of any age) consider purchasing a book as the gift. It opens up a whole world of imagination, information and enjoyment.

We live in a society where our youth are not competing for jobs with someone down the street or highway but with people on another continent half way around the world. We need to instill in our youth the importance of an education and the skills they will obtain to take them through life. An education is never wasted and can never be taken away from you.

We are fortunate in our small town to have a nice library and to have an organization that promotes literacy. The local Women in Action group sponsor several reading programs. One is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. This is where Dolly gives books to youth from birth to 5 years of age. The local WIA group pays for the postage. They also help sponsor the summer reading program at the library. Finally they sponsor the Prairie Readers Competition at the school. This involves not only Armour students but students from Tripp/Delmont, Lake Andes, Corsica, Stickney and Dakota Christian. The students have been working hard since before Thanksgiving reading books and practicing for the competition. This is a team of 4 students in a quiz bowl type of setting pitting their knowledge of books against teams from other schools. This competition is on March 31st at noon at the Armour School.  Come see between 250 - 300 students compete  and show their love of reading.

The Armour Round-Up Committee has joined forces with the Cabin Committee to raise money to build two cabins near our Lion’s Park / Lake Alcazar. In previous blogs, we’ve let you know that one of the Horizons projects is to install two cabins at Lion’s Park to provide recreational opportunities for Armour families and visitors.

Our cabin committee had originally planned to have inmates at the Springfield penitentiary build the cabins, which would be moved to sites that would be prepared by Horizons volunteers. As we’ve moved forward with the project we’ve learned that the prison will not have time to build cabins for Armour this year. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they have invited our Horizons group to the penitentiary to tour the cabins they are building and will share building plans and materials lists with us. A group of Horizons volunteers plans to build the cabins here in town.

We’ve now begun our cabin fund-raising campaign and that’s where the Round-Up Committee comes into play. They have installed donation containers at area businesses such as Wilson True Value and the X- Press Mart. Patrons can donate their change from purchases or pocket change for use on the cabin project. We’re very enthused about this joint effort and hope that Armour residents will show their generosity.

If you have any questions about the Cabin project, you can contact Todd Vogt at 724-2400 or Bob Goodnow at 724-2105. Please contact Dana Krull if you would like to make a donation for the cabins at 724-2459 or by e-mail: danakrull at unitelsd.com