Benton City, Washington

Latino/Rural Microenterprise Assistance Pilot Program (MAPP)

2010-05-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

WSU Horizons along with various partners (see below) has begun a training program designed to assist local individuals who wish to start and/or expand local small businesses. The initial training was provided by David Plate, PhD (and retired executive from AIG). The curriculum was specially designed for this project and the target population, and translated into Spanish (designed to be taught to a monolingual Spanish audience if necessary). The basic training is followed by 5 specialized workshops that deal with various topics, including a meeting between entrepreneurs and possible funders. All training sessions were given in a bilingual format to accommodate monolingual Spanish speakers.

Partners: Horizons, WSU Tri-Cities, Benton City Economic Development Council; Small Business Administration, Council of Governments; Benton/Franklin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Moses Lake Prosperity Center.

Volunteer Appreciation Banquet

2010-05-14T17:20:00.001-07:00

April 2010

The BCEDC and the Horizons program have sponsored a Volunteer Appreciation dinner to recognize and celebrate all community volunteers who have stepped up to change Benton City. Including those Youth Volunteers who have establishing the Youth Thrift Shop – which will donate ½ its profits to Hospice of Sunnyside, and the rest to local youth programs.

Rural Reflections Conference

2010-05-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

April 2010

Five community members attended the Horizons Rural Reflections Conference held in Moses Lake, WA earlier this month. Attendees participated in a variety of workshops highlighting many topics on rural poverty and how some of these problems can be worked though. The conference brought together all H1, H2, and H3 communities as well as many partners’ agencies together to review and try to understand poverty issues in rural settings.

Business Classes to Begin

2010-05-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

March 2010

The Benton City Development Council & the Horizons program have partnered with the Council of Government to successfully apply for an Entrepreneurial Training Grant funded by the Washington State Microenterprise Coalition (WSMC). $5,000 was awarded to begin providing continued business start up and expansion workshops to community members who wish to pursue starting or expanding new businesses. Workshop with start April and run through May.

Washington State Asset Building Coalition Conference

2010-05-14T17:17:00.001-07:00

November 2009

Randy Rutledge, Director of the Benton City Economic Council, participated in the annual WSABC Conference held in Tacoma Washington. He was given the opportunity to meet with a Varity of individuals representing Washington State’s asset Building efforts. Upon completion of the conference it was discovered that no coalition existed in the Benton/Franklin region to represent the needs of the Benton City. It has been decided that the establishment of a coalition would become of the priorities for Horizons and BCEC to pursue – including applying for the Coalition Planning Small Grants Program established by the WSABC in June of 2010.

Washington State Asset Building Coalition Conference

2010-05-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

Latino/Rural Microenterprise Assistance Pilot Program (MAPP)

2010-05-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

WSU Sociology Students at Work for You!

2010-03-01T15:43:00.000-08:00

Sociology 433, an undergraduate class at Washington State University, has been researching options and resources for topics that are important to your rural communities as you work to reduce poverty. Topics include: affordable housing, neighborhood safety, youth activities and much, much more.

Your community may be in contact with one of these teams, but all of their research may be relevant to the issues you are addressing. Click to the Horizons website http://www.horizons.wsu.edu/project/horizons3/community.html to read about their work.

MAPP - Microenterprise Assistance Pilot Program

2010-01-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

One of the most exciting ventures that Benton City's participation in the Horizons program has brought us is the Microenterprise Assistance Pilot Program (MAPP). Please check back for updates to this post - what we've done, successes, and notices of upcoming events.

Horizons - creating change in our community

2010-01-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

In the Spring of 2009, about 40 people including members of the Ki-Be High School leadership class participated in the Leadership Plenty training. Many good things have been started from connections made and excitement generated by those training sessions.

The need to update our city parks was identified as a priority to provide our children a safe place to play and for community members to gather.
-- Several class participants developed a position paper and presented it to City Council to solicit their support.
-- Participants partnered with the Benton City Chamber of Commerce to serve breakfast and other concessions at the Citywide Yard Sale, with proceeds designated for park improvements.
High school student Jessy Kurth and chaperone Shawn Rutledge attended the State 4-H Conference in Pullman, bringing back lots of good ideas.
Our head librarian has become more aware of community needs for access to technology and will continue to work to expand ways the library can help community members connect to information via the internet and other resources.
One of the community needs identified by the high school students is for a thrift shop, a local place where they could buy clothing inexpensively. Serendipity happened with the Lower Valley Hospice desiring to expand their services in this area and wanting to open a second thrift shop to support their non-profit organization (the first Hospice Benefit Shop - HoBS - is in Prosser).
-- The shop will be staffed by volunteers, senior citizens working with high schoolers.
-- The high school wood shop students are building the sorting/storage area addition to the new shop facility.
-- Landlord's improvements to the building have sparked other downtown merchants to make facade upgrades.
-- Another downtown merchant was encouraged to expand her offerings to fill a gap in needs between what the thrift shop will have and what she was already doing.
-- The expected January/February opening is anticipated with excitement by the community.
A conversation between participants ("Why can't we have ... like they do in the Tri-Cities?" led to the initiation of Benton City First Fridays, an informal monthly networking event that has facilitated sharing of good ideas, tips, and better communication. Feedback has included the desire for a second similar event to be held at a different time of the week so that those who can't come in the morning could participate.

On a sad note, we mourn the untimely passing of Leadership Plenty participant Charlie Parent, who had recently returned to his hometown with hopes of providing much-needed services to our senior citizens.

Upcoming events - April

2009-04-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

April 11 - Community cleanup day, free dump day for city residents
April 11 - Easter egg hunts, 10 am City Park, 11:30 Lions Club
April 12 - Community Easter sunrise service, 7:00 am Ki-Be High School football field
April 18 - Renew Yourself, Renew the Earth: 8:30 am registration for Fun Run/Walk; 9 am Run, 9:45 Walk; 10:30 Bike Rodeo & helmet fit; 1:00 pm Skateboarding Exhibition; displays & exhibits all day; Cherry Blossom Limo Tours; Segways
April 17-19 Sagebrush Freetrapper Mountain Man Rendezvous, Rattlesnake Mt. Shooting Facility
April 18 - 11:00 am Mud Bog Races
April 18 - BCJFRA horse show at the fairgrounds
April 25 - Spring Opener Car & Bike Show
April 26 - BCJFRA horse show at the fairgrounds

EDC and Business News

2008-12-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

Please post local business news. Chamber of Commerce is a source of news. Post local Business meetings, EDC meetings, business parks updates and development progress. Also economic development studies. Please send post to cjhickel@gmail.com. Place "EDC" or "Business" in the subject line of the email.

Grants

2008-12-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

Please post here all information related to grants whether

applying for,
looking for,
passing on related information,
resources on grants,
interests in building a grant writing team,
looking for training in grant writing,
update on grant funding,
grant impacts,
discovered grants,
information about a grant, etc.

Please send your posts to cjhickel@gmail.com or click on the envelope. Please use "Grants" in the subject line of your email.

Volunteers

2008-12-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

Please post your information to volunteers, any needs for volunteers, etc to this post. Email you submission to cjhickel@gmail.com or click on the envelope. Please use "Volunteers" in the subject line.

Community Events

2008-12-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Please post upcoming events by emailing your vent to cjhickel@gmail.com or click on the envelope. Please use "Community Events" in the subject line.

School News

2008-12-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

Please email school news to the forum for posting to cjhickel@gmail.com or click on the envelope. Use "School News" in the subject line please.

Benton City Stepping Up

2008-12-19T22:43:00.000-08:00

Benton City community reaches out to help others. This is a fact. And the truth is we need more resources to help everyone in need. Poverty can strike a person clear to their soul and people can lose hope in their struggles. We care about that as a community.

But we are facing even harder economic times as a nation and it is going to reach in to our community. Our food bank needs more food. We need more affordable housing for the young, middle aged and old. Many need transportation, money for heating their homes, medicines, social services, affordable child care, clothing. We hear about these issues often and lately more so than before.

Many people are frightened of what tomorrow brings. Many see their jobs or income changing. Nothing is for certain, not even that our energy supplies will remain as they are in say 5 years. Our community food bank lines are growing. Low income housing is being effected by economic disasters in the market. Some of our own citizens are looking at becoming homeless. Where will all the impacted, newly homeless people live? How can we ignore such defeat in humanity as to see a person with no home and do nothing? So the question remains. How can we prevent, help,aid those in need and preferably prevent it in the first place.

So we must ask ourselves a few questions. At a time when the entire nation is faced with raising poverty rates through job loss, foreclosures, bankruptcy and a depressed economy, does this impact your giving? Your faith in our government? Does it change your thinking about the success of a Horizon's project to reduce poverty in this community? Or do you think it is better to say that this is especially the right time for a Horizon's project?

The Northwest Area Foundation was founded during the Great Depression. The founder understood poverty all too well. His railroad company pulled out of many small towns and he saw their economy collapse and poverty set in these communities as the Great Depression cast its shadows on the people. It impacted him enough to establish the foundation just to fight poverty. And since 1934 in the same geographical areas impacted by the loss of the railroad his legacy of fighting poverty still continues long after his death. Just because his railroad changed people's lives and gave them opportunity with jobs, so that when it pulled out of those towns, he felt responsible for sending the people to a poverty level of living and much despair. Their whole lives depended on his railroad. The world has not known many such generous people and we are honored to be selected for this program.

A person we will never meet is now helping us to fight poverty in our community and Horizons will make a difference if we follow through. Can we do no less than make our best efforts? Let us all learn from a foundation whose fight has lasted 74 years in fighting poverty in our country in its worse times and so far can still fight along with us.

So what can we learn from our Horizons project that will help us prepare and lead our community? We care what happens to people in our community. We will have many to help and much to care about in these coming times. How can we ignore these facts?

The Horizons project is intended to grow like a pyramid and reach across the entire community. We do not have enough people involved to even remain viable in the program. Horizons demands results in a time frame. Horizons makes leadership central in the community and its primary key to success. Horizons builds a sustainable culture that can teach the next generation about reducing poverty. What a gift to bestow on our community. Knowledge and resources to solve our poverty issues.

What We Need to Meet Horizons Program Requirements

We need the community to embrace this project and more people to get involved. There is a spot for everyone to make a difference. We need 25 new community leaders, people who have never stepped up to the plate in their community before to come forward and sign up for Leadership Plenty. We need another 30-40 people to get involved in Study Circles ASAP. And when we reach the visioning stage and planning we will need feedback/involvement from 15% of the city population of 2800. Complete surveys if you receive one from a Horizons program volunteer. Use this blog to communicate.

For clarity the community is not just considered to be those folks who live in the city limits. The community includes anyone who considers Benton City to be their home. It is well understood that rural communities include all people and poverty issues extend beyond the city limits line as well.

Poverty will never be defeated but we can learn how to contain it and manage it and bring passage to people who need a path or opportunity that allows them to walk away from it.

Benton City is a caring community. Please join this noble project. Many people in our community will benefit from our efforts in the predicted hard times ahead.

Our community needs leaders and people to be a part of these efforts. Should we fail to get the community on board within a time frame,we are dropped from the program and we will lose out big time. Post if you are interested or have questions about getting involved or becoming a leader or want to join a study circle group, or even begin a study circle group.

Leadership Plenty

2008-12-19T21:19:00.000-08:00

Three people have completed the Leadership Plenty training course. These three new community leaders will be training at least 25 more new leaders for our Horizons community project(s) in Benton City. If you are interested in learning about this training or becoming a leader, there is a benefit of a professional certification that comes with completing the training.

Teen agers are welcome to sign up. It would be a great resume or college application addition to show professional leadership training.

Benton City needs bi-lingual leaders as well. Post your interests on the blog and you will be contacted by the trainers.

Building Community Leadership

2008-12-19T21:15:00.000-08:00

Do you think our community would be different if more people think they have an active role to play in community leadership? Do you think community leadership has an impact on how you look at your community? How do you think leadership needs can be communicated? Do you believe you could be a leader?

Economic Impact of Grants

2008-12-19T20:03:00.000-08:00

The Horizons WSU team working with our community and will provide us the training we must have to sustain leadership to reduce poverty. Leadership in our community will enable us to achieve our goals.

We will find that the more effort we as a community put into the Horizons project, the greater our returns. There really is no down side. The Northwest Area Foundation provides financial support to get us trained, materials and resources, gas cards, food and so much more to help us learn to change our community.

One of the best economic boosts small rural communities can receive is grants. Many very small communities learned about grant writing through WSU Horizons and found tens of thousands and others achieved in receiving over 100 thousand dollars in grants.

WSU Horizons has published its own Stevens County report and determined the economic growth factors from grant injections. WSU Horizons reports covers the impact of grant dollars multiplied over 5 years.

Grants are money that is coming into the community from outside sources. These reported results show higher economic growth multipliers typically expected and attributed by economists for such local source economy development. Although local source economy carries the highest economic development of factor of 4, the lowest is a global supplier of consumer goods from foreign suppliers such as Walmart that carries a time 1.5 factor. This low factor indicates most of the economic impact is coming from taxes and employee salaries.

Why? Has WSU Horizons found a better way? One could conclude that WSU Horizons partnership principals can bring higher growth multipliers into our local economy. Such injections into our local economy are critical. Why not use processes that work?

What grants are available to us? Do we have skill sets in writing grants in our community? What partnerships will we need to achieve our goals? So how achievable is this in your mind?

WSU Horizons offers training in grant writing, has many resources and written guides as well experience in successful grant application. WSU has pledged a partnership to help Benton City through Horizons.

Guided by WSU Horizons resources, principles and expert staff, many communities found ways to fund big dreams such as building a community center including an aquatic addition. The process of such a project has been captured as a guide to help others, including the costs. Because of these efforts, we have a starting point if this were our vision.

We as a community can all go grant hunting! What grants are available to us? Grants.gov is a great place to start looking. WSU Horizons has already gathered up grant resources as well. Horizons offers grant writing training. There is even Horizons grant writing training on You Tube! Do we have skill sets in writing grants within our community? There are many grants to go after, so should form a team for grant writing? Who can lead such a team?

What grants do you think we need to find and apply for? What partnerships will we need in our community to achieve our goals? So how achievable is this in your mind to become a successful Horizons community? Post your comments and thoughts.

Taking Action Against Poverty

2008-12-19T18:51:00.000-08:00

After we gather ideas and do some visioning, there is one very important requirement Benton City as a community must achieve. We must write an action plan that is customized to our needs and goals that we as a community envision will reduce poverty in Benton City. Horizon leaders are going to help us with this process but the hard work is on us to do.

Much of what we decide to do in our visioning will require funds from grants, state funding, and putting local economic development strategies in place.

Here is one effective strategy. We can reduce poverty locally by growing our local economy by conscientiously spending our hard earned dollars in Benton City instead of spending in other cities where it makes sense. Stop exporting our consumer economy to another city and out of our community whenever we can. We lose the taxes collected on our dollars from sales and state collected B&O. Not to mention the fact that Tri-Cities benefits in growth demographics from our patronage. A round trip to Tri-Cities is no less than 25 miles and up to 60 miles of fuel and time on top of dollars spent. And if you bought fuel in Tri-Cities on your way home, there goes even more local dollars.

Granted people need to buy what they need, but often what they need can be found locally (believe it or not our hardware store is often lower in price than Home Depot even before you factor in fuel) but because of shopping habits we shop in Tri-Cities and we just drive by the hardware store. I recently purchased an American made paintbrush from our local store and it felt good to buy that product.

We the American people are now in debt to communist China because we buy goods 'Made in China" and export dollars the very same way. Buy locally instead every chance you can. No one says this better than Michael Shuman. Check out his work on this. This was passed to me from the head of WSU Horizons. It inspired me enough to see it was possible even for Benton City to turn things around.

Go to: http://www.small-mart.org/ for a resource for small town economic development. Also go to (http://horizons.wsu.edu/documents/SMChecklists-Patriots.pdf ) for a checklist of 27 Things that list ideas everyone can do to improve our local economy. Also read through the presentation for some real inspirations on what we can do as a community.

PPP1 http://horizons.wsu.edu/documents/MHS_Workshop__1.pdf (95 slides)

PPP2 http://horizons.wsu.edu/documents/MHS_Workshop__2.pdf (66 slides)

Post your comments or excitement about this strategy of buying locally. Discuss whether or not you will make an effort to participate as a community member? What interests you the most about the 27 Things checklist.

Community Change

2008-12-14T02:05:00.000-08:00

Our community needs to brainstorm for ideas that can change our economy. Economic development is a sure approach to reducing poverty by creating new jobs.

There are some pretty exciting ideas to discover for new business models and resources to tell us how to start anew business. Also, many ideas to improve our current local economy are free. We can keep and/or create more jobs just by the community changing a habit or taking an action. Many small changes about where or how we spend or money can bring big returns to our community and they are really simple.

There are many other small communities faced with similar challenges that has already found solutions and changed their community with measurable success. They serve to inspire and spawn new ideas. We use to call this using American Ingenuity to solve the problem. More modern term is"building skills and mobilizing'.

So what do you think is possible in our future as a community and what are your visions for Benton City? Please share your visions and ideas in your comments.

Listing Community Resources

2008-12-14T01:39:00.000-08:00

What are the resources or assets that we can think of that are available, accessible, and currently exist that are community based that can be used in our Horizons efforts to reduce or prevent poverty? What are Benton City's greatest strengths? What is missing or is a weakness?

Please comment and come up with as many as possible.

Study Circles Happening

2008-12-14T00:58:00.000-08:00

Study Circles are the first step in Horizons as a community to understanding the problems we face in our community. Facilitators, local citizens have been trained by Horizons coaches. Study Circles are a model for any issue in a community where the community needs to discuss the problems and find answers. Anyone can come to a Study Circle.

Many people are faced with very limited resources, income, and unemployment. For some people it feels like their lives can never change. For those who never experienced counting their change to buy a gallon of milk for their children or simply miss meals because food was low in the family pantry, or worry continually when they will be able to ever stop worrying, the study circle is about coming to understand poverty from all angles.

Poverty may be hard to talk about and the word itself hard to accept that it applies economically or socially to your situation. This is why it is very important to not carry the 'hand down" attitude to a study circle because poverty is center to discussion. Come with a hand up attitude and be a good listener.

Benton City has held close to the minimum amount of study circles required by the foundation but the real point of them is to find the present situation in our community and begin to find possible answers.

There is much to learn about our community and every voice matters. The study circle is a tool, an approach to learn what the problems are from those who understand it best. There is opportunity in Horizons for those with the greatest needs to lead the rest of the community towards solving the problems which cause poverty.

And hopefully, through listening, learning and understanding we can remove the stigma many apply to others when we hear the word 'poverty' applied to people. The irony of it all is a person who has used credit unwisely and is deep in debt may think of themselves above such a term because they have built their life on debt and they appear better off than they really are. Yet in reality the person living on low income may actually own more than they do.

The economic crisis has warned us that times can get much worse for more people. The impact that haunts many people about trying to live on too little income will surely devastate the majority of people who could come to face poverty first hand.

While we hope that our economy begins to turn up and not downwards, for those of us who know how to survive such economic challenges, we can surely help those who may have even overlooked the poor before they faced it themselves. We can become leaders in our communities through our experiences and efforts. We can reduce poverty as a community as long as we decide to make it our goals to do so. We can all share our community legacy that we changed community to a better place to live and changed people's lives for the good.

We should not judge a person by what they have in their pocketbook but by their fruits. Poverty can defeat a person. Horizons is about leadership to reduce poverty for communities who deal with it every day. Please join in the discussions. Post your comments. They will be read and your voice counts.

Posts to summarize the previous held study circles will be forthcoming. However, let's treat the blog like a study circle and share thoughts, ideas, ask questions. Please post your comments.

Steps Against Poverty

2008-12-14T00:02:00.000-08:00

What kinds of steps is Benton City taking to against poverty that you are aware of? How much effort is our community taking to reduce poverty? Where can we do a better job? What does the community need to do better? Be specific in your comments. Please share your thoughts with your comments.

What Resources Are We Missing?

2008-12-13T23:50:00.000-08:00

What additional resources does Benton City need to prevent or reduce poverty?
Do we need more affordable housing? Additional bus routes? A Work Source location? Share your ideas in your comments.

Benton City Poverty Rate

2008-12-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

How can we discover the extent of need of our community? While we know that US Census data and other statistical data has Benton County with a 11% poverty rate overall, local indications are that Benton City has a higher rate. USDA and other agencies will use the free or reduced lunch percentage as an indicator. Benton City schools have over a 50% rate. But how does that data represent adults and couples with no children or seniors?

Community Insight and Ideas

2008-12-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

What insights do you have about how our community can do something to prevent or reduce poverty? Share your thoughts and ideas with your comments.

Jessie Petsch on Community Poverty

2008-12-13T13:54:00.000-08:00

While we have community needs and poverty in our community seemingly being ignored, we also have small pockets of dedicated people who are attempting to meet our community need and reduce poverty. This is not always transparent to the people who need the services in the community the most. Much of the time that knowledge remains hidden to those who really need the help.

History of Benton City shows that local citizens have rallied to provide local information to build an infrastructure for our community to support families in poverty. At times we find that our community is short the funding for a program but we find we have many of the pieces of these needed services in place. These services and efforts do help those who know about them and use them. People will report what we have available.

Our community has been found lacking in communication so needs for some persons and families are not being met and they are not aware what is available. Our community newspaper the Benton City Bulletin is a primary resource for local information. However it is only a monthly publication and many times news items are not reported in a timely manner which can make critical information for those with needs unavailable. Services are not well advertised or can be known about in a timely manner for people who need the services quickly to meet their need. Meeting an immediate need can prevent poverty from striking a family.

New community efforts by local people are beginning at this time with the Horizons Project to widen the small pockets of good intent of others to better meet individual family needs that stem from insufficient income that leads to poverty. One of our goals in Horizons is to build a broader network in the community to help bring community wide support that can perhaps prevent poverty in our community.

This where the Horizons program comes into play. Horizons is a program which trains to builds community leadership to reduce poverty. Horizons is a proven model for small communities and the program welcomes community participation for all ages. Horizons can teach us to develop our new model for our community to fight poverty with a broader reach of community leadership. Join the Horizons efforts and support the community in changing our community and reducing poverty.

Affirmative Action Policy

2008-12-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

WSU Extension programs and policies are consistent with federal and state laws, regulations, and applicable Executive Orders regarding civil rights, equal opportunity, and Affirmative Action. Washington State University prohibits discrimination on the basis of race; sex; religion; age; color; creed; national or ethnic origin; physical, mental, or sensory disability; marital status; sexual orientation; and status as a Vietnam-era or disabled veteran. Concerns or evidence of non-compliance may be reported to your local WSU Extension office or the Washington State University Center for Human Rights on the WSU Pullman Campus, 509-335-8288.