Donor Stories
The Community Development Program (CDP) utilizes the HomeTown Competitiveness (HTC) model to work with regional communities to help build sustainability strategies that center around people.
The HTC model utilizes a four pillar approach: leadership, resources for development, entrepreneurship and youth. The model is built upon simplicity—every community needs leaders, assets, businesses, and youth to sustain itself. The pillar system motivates activity for the project and sets parameters to help guide community leaders. However, the execution of figuring out these intangible concepts is the task taken up by concerned members of these communities. The ending results are dependent on their community goals and imaginations. This model was developed in Nebraska as an answer to community outcry.
Currently the Community Development Project is funded by the Bush Foundation, based in Minnesota. They concentrate their efforts only on the Dakotas and Minnesota to help create courageous leaders, develop community giving, concentrate on the development of education leaders and tribal growth. The Community Development Project has similar focuses but look at the impact of people on entrepreneurship, leadership, youth, and community giving.
CDP was approached by Dr. Kerry Livingston, Assistant Professor of Sociology with Dickinson State University to partner with service learning student workers/interns. Dr. Livingston’s course was a seminar in sociology that is designed for the exploration of specific topics which were not covered in regularly scheduled coursework. The students would be placed at work sites that fit their skills and interest levels. The service learning is a benefit to both the community and the student. Dr. Livingston stated, “Universities are promoting it because many believe it is the responsibility of higher education to graduate students who are not only skilled and knowledgeable, but are also civic-minded.”
This section will showcase the donor stories that have been captured by a student work study. We decided to capture the donor stories because of the alarming trend of the transfer of wealth and to promote giving(time, treasure, and talent) to a nonprofit. These are people in ND that have made a difference in their community and to our COCO members. We continue to showcase new donor stories, as they come in.