Save Your Town Part 2 of Reimagining Rural

By PR Extension Office

“Small towns can best be saved by their own people using their own resources.” (Save Your.town)

Participants at the second session of Reimagining Rural were encouraged to “take action” to make positive changes in their communities, according to MSU Powder River Extension Agent Mary Rumph.

Deb Brown and Becky McCray from “Save Your.town” explained the way to save our town is to become “Idea Friendly”. The key is to focus more on tiny experiments by lots of people rather than a few big bets made by only a handful of official leaders. Welcome all ideas, from all the people in your town. That’s who’s coming to save your town: all of you.

The program titled “Save Your Town” was sponsored by MSU Extension, the Powder River Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture and the School Community Development Council, featured two virtual speakers, Deb Brown from Geneva, Iowa, population 141; and Becky McCray, from Hopeton, Oklahoma, a town of 30 people.

Both speakers are passionate about saving small towns and their enthusiasm was contagious. In less than fifteen minutes, the participants had generated a list of ten community ideas that would inspire others to help make Broadus and Powder River County better, explained Mary Rumph.

Melissa Billing, Powder River Chamber President and session facilitator added, “It’s all about fueling passion for the community we love and the community we serve! We want to celebrate where we came from and leap to embrace all that we CAN become. No idea will be ignored, no one will be dismissed, because together we can and WILL accomplish so much.”

“It was motivating and exciting to hear the ideas for making Broadus a better place to live,” stated Rumph. “I think we all liked the idea of small steps can accomplish big things and to take action.”

Brown and McCray challenged the traditional hierarchy of decision making of endless meetings and committees – “just do it” they said. “If it isn’t successful then go on to the next idea.”

Brown described the Idea Friendly way as:

• Informal gatherings

• Chaos is good, it brings lots of ideas with it.

• There are many people involved.

• We test out ideas, build them and learn from the ones that don’t work.

• We are connected to each other and keep building new connections.

• There are many small steps and lots of action.

She said, “It’s a challenge to convert to the Idea Friendly way. There’s a lot of us somewhere in the middle. Doing things, the old way, and trying out a few things in the Idea Friendly way.”

The final session of the “ReImagining Rural” series will be held Tuesday, October 13th, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Everyone and ALL ideas are welcome! Attendance at prior sessions is not required. Prior sessions were recorded and are available at https://powderriver.msuextension.org/ReimaginingRural. html.