Conde, SD

The Horizons II program may be winding down but that hasn’t stopped the momentum here in Conde. A successful breadbaking and bead bracelet workshop was held Monday, June 19th with several youngsters taking home a loaf of homemade bread and many enjoying the art of making bead bracelets and necklaces. We are still working with the Conde City on improvements to the city park. Several women gathered in the evenings to donate time and talent to do some painting there and we hope that the new slide is installed soon. Our hardworking group with the help of others, have planned and prepared an area for the delivery of our stone welcome sign. We hope to have this project completed in time for guests coming to town for the Conde High All-school reunion. Another workshop is to be help on the 23rd for beginning wordworking and sewing. We will soon be planning for our graduation and an August “Fall Festival”. We hope to keep up the enthusiasm and inspire more citizens to join in the fun!!

Monday, May 19th will be the clean-up day for the city. We have the flyers out to start at 2:00 with a supper to be served at 6:00 for all the workers. We have new leadership for the event and good leadership it is. We will have a dumpster sitting across from the park and that will remain from the 14th through the 23rd. Because of sound leadership lots of questions have come up about various kinds of trash….what about that old paint and batteries? It sounds like people are ready to clean up!

The school children did a fine job two weeks ago along main street and around the school, this should complete the job for most of the town and be completed by Memorial Day. There are other projects such as some old cars that will be dealt with when a crusher is available and we hope that is completed by the end of June and before the All School Reunion. Am sure the Senior Citizens will offer a good meal to make us all glad we came.

The work on the will not be started with the clean up as The Young Men’s Club will help with that as a new slide needs to be put in, the old one taken down and protective ground cover put in place. We called in the City Insurance Representative for a most informative safety regulations to be followed. I didn’t know it but slides are made for the young to 5 years old and then 5 and up. Our new slide is for the 5 to 12 years old and we need to make sure that information is on the slide. We need to make sure that the park is segmented to the age groups so that there is less possibility for little ones getting trampled by bigger ones. Also, always place swings of like ages together and do not mix them. All these things sound so reasonable and who would know those regulations until you asked especially when your town is so small and you don’t have a Park and Rec. Department. We are so pleased that we will know the standards before we start.

Hello everyone! It is about time the grey haired old lady gets on board again to tell you of some of the activities. Believe the last time I was “on” I was highlighting the Mentoring workshop we were hosting. Well, snow cancellation and trying to pick other dates we did host it on May 4th…a Sunday and that kept several away but we had a good turnout. Our Extension Educator did an excellent job with the theme of “Tools for the Trade.” She had all of her tools on hand for table decorations, wore her tool belt that she conveniently used the pockets for cards for the program. We learned about Community Service as part of our program, civic engagement in how to get our children to be civic minded youth, positive youth development, program mentorship managment, positive guidance and discipline, parent as partners and what if bullying come up. The 5 to 6 hour seminar is not finished as we were all given a disc to have follow up and then upon completion we will each receive $25.00 for our organization or the new hat we couldn’t wait to purchase!!! We learned the difference between tattling and reporting, we worked in groups of the tools of the trade we were given in our packets. One of my favorite things was the parent backpacks. Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to leave the hospital with a new baby with a back pack of information on parenting skills, family activities, support and the list could just go on and on.
We will get into mentoring as we start summer activities for the children of the community. We have had a nice sign up for beginning woodworking, bread baking, making a beaded bracelet, beginning sewing and working with our pizza garden. We need to keep children busy and learning life skills that they can enjoy and make something with pride will give them some self esteem and maybe become entrepreneurs as we need to have a market for our hunters when they come in and what better way than to have the children of the community have things to sell. It should be a good summer of learning and fun. We have touched on a whole new segment of people who are so glad to help with the projects, too.

How will your community make decisions aboout seeking further resources to support it’s plan?
We as a community must continue to work with city leaders and employees with city projects. The permission of the city for some of our ideas should be acquired as they have local control, and access to city/state resources. They must be involved in some decision making. We should also include other area organizations as they too may have access to resources that we do not have. By including others in decision making we encourage more interest and opportunity.

In reference to category 8, question: what structural changes have been made in how the community does it’s work/makes decisions? I don’t know if this would be considered structural but I believe we have started to include people in some projects that would normally not get involved. This is important in creating substantial changes as the same few people cannot do it all. We have obtained the help of a local young man to set up a web site for Conde, by involving him in this we may stir up his community interest and involvement. The same goes for city wide cleanup committees. The more “new ” people we get involved the more new ideas we may acquire. If we involve them in planning and decision making they will be more interested in helping.

It has been a long winter; not a bad winter, but one we will remember that was cold enough to keep people in, dismal with a lack of sunshine many days to keep our mood less than joyous! So therefore, our Vision has had a slow start in Conde. However, we are moving forward to plan the Community Clean Up Day with a possible date of May 3rd as a beginning. The pamphlet put out by Kansas State University will be helpful for organization of the Day or days that we need for clean up of our town. The city has joined forces with Spink County for the possibility of removing “unwanteds” from the community. We have a new slide that has been purchased with Horizons and City Dollars for the City Park; the Men’s Club will do volunteer labor for that plus the City Insurance Company will be on hand to make sure everything is done to specification and safety. Speculation has it to look into the possibility of a Governor’s House now that we have the list of who has what for lots in town. The mentoring class with the Leadership of Cooperative Extension Service will be held on April 26th. So you see, we are getting a slow start but it takes alot of leg work, planning and talking to get evrything in order. That is what will keep us feeling not only good about spring coming but also about working with the many entities and people to make projects come together for the betterment of Conde: “A place to call home.”

How can we, as a small community sustain the changes we are going through? Well, first off, I have always said that if we didn’t like change, we wouldn’t let our children grow up! However, with changes, stability has to have been a part of it so that a family or community can grow stronger with change. The one stable part of our Horizons program is having the Community Development Organization in town and it has been here for many years. They built the high school gymnasium with volunteer labor in the late “40’s” and gave it to the school….as just one example. Though the organization has grown weaker, (perhaps because of no real issues facing the town) it is an organization that Horizons is partnering with to keep the stability we need and continue the growth that Horizons has allowed. We have found with the Horizons group word of mouth is best and we are finding our group growing.

We now have two from the Conde Horizons group on the City Council. They are Darlene Grant who is the Conde Council Chairman and newly elected, Cindy Smith who is also the treasurer for the Conde Civic Development. This makes the bond between the city and Horizons grow even more. This is the beginning of a real partnership for a stronger future for our town.

Thank You so much to Horizons for the opportunity to attend the SD Governor’s Conference on Economic Development! The two day Seminar was held in Pierre on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 8th and 9th.

It was awesome to mingle with all the fine speakers (and one of the first questions asked was “and how big is your community?” They made us all feel welcome and said that no matter the size, all communities were important.

It certainly gave this old lady alot of food for thought in the fact that if they do close the school we may just have the open door to the door that might close. They stressed how important our City Web Site is and upon returning home we have sped to action to take care of that.

It was most enlightning to visit with other Horizons communities and to see so many bright young people handling such important issues for our state. The speakers gave very useful information and I don’t know when I have attended such a relaxed, personable and professional conference.

It was pretty hard to put two full days into an update e-mail to our Horizons committee upon return home but I tried, only after my “brain dead” feeling had expired and it all started to soak in. I certainly learned alot and will share it all between now and our next Horizons meeting which will be on the 24th of February at 4:00 at the Conde Community Center.

The weather was a mixed bag but Mother Nature must have known that Conde really needed the seminar. We had a crowd with at least 6 new people coming from our small town.

There was wonderful information given and we sure found out that “branding” isn’t just for cows! We will have to work on our brand for Conde that will continue to boast our slogan, “Conde, a place to call home.”

It is beyond a doubt left the town in a depressed state to think that the school closing may get to a reality. There will be an informational meeting on Wednesday, the 16th at 7:00 at the school; all interested poeple should try to attend.