Hot Springs, SD Horizons

Do you want to help make Hot Springs a place where youth have opportunities for activities that help them enjoy life and fulfill their potential? We have an active Children & Youth Task Force working on exciting projects. Some of the objectives have been completed, but there is much to do, including fundraising for a Boys & Girls Club. There may be a place for you to help; you only have to ask.

Come to the Horizons community dinner Feb 21 at the American Legion (6 p.m., lasagne, good food, good people) and sign up for a team, or — if you can’t make it — leave a comment here with your contact information and someone will get in touch with you.
 

Goal One, Objective 1: improve and expand youth programs
in the community.Implementation Steps…………………………………………………….Completion Date 1. Research: Conduct interviews with schools in other communities
where successful after-school and Friday programs are in place ………. Ongoing

Are you interested in getting involved in community television? Are you interested in learning to blog or administering the Hot Springs Horizons Blogsite? Are you interested in training others to access the internet and blog on our site to disseminate information and ideas?

Come to the Horizons community dinner Feb 21 at the American Legion (6 p.m., lasagne, good food, good people) and sign up for a team, or — if you can’t make it — leave a comment here with your contact information and someone will get in touch with you.
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Goal 5: implement a comprehensive communications
system for our community.Goal 5 - Objective 1: Assist GWTC with programming Hot Springs local cable TV channel, involving youth and adults.

Implementation Steps……………………………………………………………………..Completion Date

1. Research how other towns program their local cable channel………….………….. 04/31/08

2. Provide input to Golden West, as requested …………………………………………….…. Ongoing

3. Determine availability and interest of our high school students in developing the programming…………………………………………………………………………………………..2/15/08 Ongoing

4. Provide ongoing support to Golden West community cable tv. As Requested

Method Of Evaluation………………………………………………………………………Completion Date

Local Cable Channel is on the air…………………………………………………………………….….. 05/01/08

Goal 5 - Objective 2: Hot Springs Horizons blog is widely used.

Implementation Steps Completion Date

1. Recruit and train blog administrators. …………………….……………. 10/24/07

2. Post Horizons blog website in the library computers…………….….. 03/01/08

3. Publicize how to participate in the community blog………….. 11/15/07 Ongoing

Method Of Evaluation Completion Date

Blogsite automatically enumerates participation…………………………………..… Ongoing

Scope and variety of content increases …………………………….……02/01/08 & Ongoing

Brett Nachtigall, Star publisher and member of the Children & Youth ATF, blogs answers to two questions:

How has your community changed since joining Horizons?

Prior to Horizons, there were already a lot of people in the community who had a lot of good ideas to improve our community. Horizons however was able to bring those people and their ideas together, under one common goal.
Until Horizons was introduced to us in Hot Springs, the people and their ideas had little direction and it was difficult to draw the lines between everyone’s goals as they oftentimes seemed unrelated.
Now when I tell someone about a project that was generated from a Horizons discussion, people immediately recognize the bigger picture and that the project has the support of a large part of the community.
During the Horizons Study Circles, there was a lot of discussion about our youth and how we could help them. Our Children and Youth Task Force, which was created out of the Study Circles, brought all of the various ideas together. In addition, we also gained further input from the entire community though a survey of both children and their parents. Based on all of the input we accumulated, I’m confident we are heading in the right direction by working towards opening our very own Boys and Girls Club.
Without Horizons providing the catalyst for our efforts, I do not believe we would have been able to get all of the people and their ideas together, under one common goal, to make this happen.

Is your community more hopeful about the future? How do you know?

I do believe the community is more hopeful about the future. I can feel it in myself and can see it on the faces of my fellow Youth and Children Task Force members. With our current plans of opening a Boys and Girls Club in Hot Springs, there is a genuine feeling of excitement about what we are doing. We all have big dreams about what our work will create. But what is most exciting, is that we all believe that the dream will come true because we have the support of Horizons and the guidance of an internationally successful program like the Boys and Girls Club.

George Kotti responds to questions posed by a Horizons Program Coordinator:

1. How has your community changed since joining Horizons?

I believe that a door to a more positive dialog has been opened. Prior to Horizons the community was very segmented. As the Study Circles began, individuals from different segments of the community began to see that we all had similar concerns about our community and that we all could work together to address some of the major issues that we face. I believe that we have laid a foundation for working together in the future. The progress toward addressing youth concerns has been a very shining example of this cooperation.

2. Is your community more hopeful about the future? How do you know?

I think that the community is more hopeful about the future. Simply meeting together to create a strategic plan has caused many of us to hope that many of our community’s challenges can be met. One specific example has been the Chamber’s affordable housing project. When the program was first announced it was received with mixed reviews. I believe that the identification of a lack of housing by the Horizon’s Study Circles and the successful completion of the first home going to a young Hot Springs couple has increased interest in the program by identifying additional lots where homes can be built. Thanks to Horizon’s for their support.

George H. Kotti
Executive Director
Hot Springs Area Chamber of Commerce

I for one appreciate the positive comments appearing on this blogsite. Hot Springs has earned a reputation as a contentious community, but have we not learned how expensive this can be. Positive regard for each other’s contributions is healthier in every way, almost guaranteed to reduce property taxes! Truly we have much to appreciate, we are a unique community — blessed with a talented arts community, a powerful allied-health and complementary-health community, and a lot of smart creative people. We are blessed with location-location, as they say in Chamber circles, great climate, warm springs and a beautiful natural environment. We’re off the beaten track (off the Heartland Hwy, that is), but that is part of our charm. (Our amazing deer population is, for tourists anyway, part of our charm.) Working together we can all do better.

People will have an opportunity soon, to join teams to carry out Horizons strategic plan objectives. The unapproved final draft is elsewhere on this site, posted this date. Take a look to see where you want to plug in to help achieve a short-term or long-term objective. There is something for everyone in this plan.

I think the Horizons Project has the potential for making significant changes in the community. I hear people saying that they are hopeful that the project will have some very tangible solutions to our city issues. New partnerships need to be built with community elected and business leaders to help spread the word and provide hopefulness that something good will, indeed, really happen as a result of the project.

The “report card” discussed in another blog today asks Hot Springs bloggers to address specific questions. The questions were sent by email to about 100 people, and here is the first response, in boldface.

What do you think, do you agree with the blogger, do you care to comment?
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Please answer these questions by including it in your blogs for January: *******

Please choose one or two questions in EACH category to address on your blog:

Category 6: Building skills and mobilizing around leadership

What changes are you seeing in the way community leadership is exercised or carried out? How is it different? I see no changes in Hot Springs by leaders and think our present leadership is burned out. We need change.

How has your community changed after LeadershipPlenty® training?

In what ways have leadership skills been improved/enhanced? What is different?

What changes are you seeing in the way leadership is carried out? How decisions get made in your community?

What difference does the involvement of low income people make in community leadership? none

Category 10: Building skills and mobilizing around community

How has your community changed since joining Horizons?

Is your community more hopeful about the future? How do you know?

What evidence do you have that community members see poverty as a community issue?

Are more people involved in creating ideas, plans and taking actions on behalf of the community? No What difference does this make?

What new partnerships have been created (within your community, or between your community and others)?

I think most all of us have heard of micro-loans, and I know there’s been some discussion of trying to get them started in Hot Springs. While we haven’t figured out how to make that happen here, I have learned of a cool website where you can make micro-loans to entrepeneurs around the world. The recommended loan amount is $25.00 and you choose the country, person, and business you want to loan to. Check it out at www.kiva.org