• Rural Dynamics Inc. award $12,000 to SD Indian Business Alliance
• Senator Jon Tester: Farm Bill Perspective
• A Regional Look at the Farm Bill
• WY gets $300,000 in Grants for Children
• Wyoming program gets National attention
• Glendive Program is model for Region
• Anti-Meth program expands to Wyoming

Rural Dynamics Inc. award $12,000 to SD Indian Business Alliance

The Great Falls, Montana based organization Rural Dynamics Incorporated (RDI) has awarded a grant for $12,000 to the South Dakota Indian Business Alliance (SDIBA).  Now known as Rural Dynamics Incorporated, Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Montana was founded in 1968 to provide for the credit needs of residents across Montana and Wyoming. The organization provides programs and establishes partnerships to help youth, individuals, and families achieve economic independence across a four state Northern Plains region.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded RDI $2.1 million to empower the Northern Plains region, consisting of North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.  Over the past two years, RDI has held regional meetings throughout the region.  These meetings, called “Plains Talks,” empowered each community to determine where RDI’s re-granting money should go.  This grant to SDIBA is a first step in the process of achieving the vision generated by Northern Plains residents.  The mission of SDIBA is to remove barriers to Indian Country business development while creating and expanding Indian owned businesses by maximizing resources and partnerships.

“By encouraging entrepreneurship and state-tribal collaboration, the South Dakota Indian Business Alliance is making great strides in achieving economic independence for South Dakota’s Indian Country,” said Montana Representative Shannon Augare, Director of Public Policy and Community Relations for RDI.  “This award will help the Alliance reach more South Dakotans and create widespread change in the region.”

This collaborative RDI vision: Rural life has value to the region and the nation. We are creating a region where all people have the opportunity to thrive in the community they choose, where diversity is cherished, and where community pride leads to remaining in the region for generations to come. We recognize the importance of regional interconnections, and we value personal, community, and organizational relationships that are built upon integrity. We seek to nurture a continuing sense of pride, hope, and belief that both community and regional potential is being achieved.

To learn more about Rural Dynamics Incorporated and the Northern Plains Initiative, please contact Shannon Augare, Director of Public Policy and Community Relations at 406.454.5712.  You can find more information on RDI at www.ruraldynamics.org and the Plains Talks at www.plainstalk.org.

Senator Jon Tester: Farm Bill Perspective

As of the release today, a couple deadlines for the new Farm Bill have gone by and now President Bush has indicated that if we don't have one set by Friday there will be no new Farm Bill until at least next year. With the Farm Bill covering support for farmers, regional economic development programs, and the USDA nutrition programs, it has a broad and deep impact on rural communities across the nation. And because of that impact it is one of the most contentious issues in rural America.

To give some scope to how the Farm Bill impacts the region, RDI is collecting the opinions of people from all over the region, from all different professions impacted by the Farm Bill. Click on the link below and tell us your thoughts, and what community you live in or near. By the next issue we'll map the comments across the region for you all to see how the Farm Bill impacts the whole of the Northern Plains.

The first five years of a child's life are the most formative, say officials with the Coalition for Wyoming Children. It is imperative children are ready to start school, said Jan Lawrence, chairwoman of the coalition. They must be healthy, have good family support and possess the language and behavioral skills needed to enter kindergarten.

Agencies across the state work to give children the start they need, but Lawrence said it is a "scattered" effort in which they "accomplish a little more" each year. To bring these agencies together, the state received a "Smart Start" technical assistance grant valued at about $150,000. "The Smart Start grant will set up a system," Lawrence said. "We will get all organized and lined up so we are not missing anything.

Wyoming program gets National attention

The lunch table was full of people in the same boat: Single mothers who are trainees in the hydraulics and pipe-fitting trades, thrown together and traveling to a place none of them could quite imagine.

"I don't know how I want to say this," said Lillian McEwan, who is 31 and a mother of four. "But I trust you guys more than people that I've known all my life."...Here in a state with the highest gap in the nation between a woman's wage and a man's, and a divorce rate 30 percent above the national average, some women are finding a new way to storm the economic barricades.

Glendive Program is model for Region

People across the state are looking to Glendive and the Farm-to-Table project as a model of local food systems.

The Grow Montana Coalition is composed of organizations - including the local Farm-to-Table project - that promote community economic development policies designed to improve citizens' access to Montana foods....

Representatives from the coalition also served on the planning committee which brought together Montana's agricultural, hunger/nutrition, economic development, low-income and other interests to the first Governor's Food and Agriculture Summit in Helena in the spring of 2007. One result of the summit was a vision that is being publicized statewide as "Montana Food for Montanans - It Just Makes Sense." ... Gov. Brian Schweitzer has embraced the initiative as a way to close existing gaps in food security through in-state resources.

Anti-Meth program expands to Wyoming

A methamphetamine prevention program that has been recognized nationally for its success in Montana is coming to Wyoming.

The Wyoming Meth Project will use the same marketing strategies and tools used by its neighbor to the north, said Trudi McMurry, director of the McMurry Foundation, which took the lead in bringing together donors for the Wyoming project with the Montana businessman who conceived the program.  "We are actually taking the exact same information that Montana uses and using it in Wyoming," McMurry said Tuesday.