Cailin Neudorf, Blog #1

2012 Basketball Photo.

Hello everyone! My name is Cailin Neudorf, and I’m from the small town of Hart, Texas where I will be a junior at Hart High School. I am the new Vice President for Student Council, was inducted into National Honor Society this year, I am a Varsity cheerleader, and a part of the Varsity basketball, cross country, track and golf teams. After high school, I would love to major in education and also become a basketball coach. I have two younger sisters, Camrie, 15, and Candyce, 12. My mother is our high school principle and my step dad is a coach as well.

I have been involved in plenty of other activities outside of school including AAU basketball, Radical Cheer Competition Squad, and served as Miss Hart 2010.

I love animals, enjoy meeting new people and making new friends. I'm passionate about basketball and enjoy spending my free time in the gym. I love the Boston Celtics and I'm Rajon Rondo's #1 Fan!

Growing up in a small town has given me the opportunity to be involved in many activities. My mom and other family members are very involved in the community. Watching them having chosen to stay in their home town to make a living, raise their families and giving back to their community, has shown me the importance of community involvement. This internship will allow me to continue to learn how to do that and continue to make our town grow and be the best place possible.

"The Gang." (My sisters & I)

Syndee Adams, Post #1

            Hello! I’m Syndee Adams. This is my blog ever.  I was born and raised in Superior, Nebraska. I studied two years at Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture in Agribusiness before transferring to Kansas State University, where I’m majoring in Agriculture Economics and getting a minor in Animal Science. In my spare time, I love showing and riding horses, and being away from the city life and being back home on the farm.

            I’m going to do my internship on Kansas State University campus in Hale Library. I will be collecting databases of the contents of over one hundred boxes that is housed at the Capper Co-op Center in the library. These boxes are the remains of records of Farmland Industries. Farmland Industries grain side evolved from the Kansas Farmers Union Jobbing Association. As well as, I will be collecting data that shows how the structure of the Co-op changed and evolved from 1907 on.

            I have never ever heard of Ogallala Commons before. I have learned that it is a big non-profit organization that provides education and leadership to give a boost to the communities in the region of the High Plain-Ogallala Aquifer.

This information will help me with my Community Internship by providing education to Kansas Farmers Union and the public about how the Co-op developed and how the Farmland Industries evolved from the Kansas Farmers Union Jobbing Association.

Delivering mail for the annual National Pony Express  Re-Ride

I’m excited for this internship to begin and all the information that will be learned and shared about the agriculture industry! 

Rebecca Hopp Intern Post #1

Hello! This is my first official blog as an Ogallala Commons! 

(For additional info, to view my artwork, and follow my travels please visit my website and other blogs: www.rebeccajhopp.com  Please feel free to leave comments, I'd love to hear from you!)

My name is Rebecca J. Hopp. I was born and raised in South Central Minnesota. I studied graphic design and advertising for two years at South Dakota State University before transferring to the University of Memphis to receive a bachelors degree in Advertising Photography. I was previously employed as a marketing graphic designer for a large Memphis law firm and also work as freelance photographer and designer. I am pursuing a masters of fine arts degree in photography at Texas Tech University and ultimately plans to pursue a career in education.

Since early in my master's degree program I have been connected with Ogallala Commons and am continually amazed at what a great organization it is-- connecting communities resources and building up communities are just two of the things that I admire about Ogallala Commons. Not to mention the incredibly nice people who are always open and willing to lend a hand and help out young people in building their careers! 

During my internship I am inviting area youth grades 3-12 to use their camera as a tool to explore agriculture in their community through sessions entitled "Exploring the Future of Agriculture Through Photography". I developed the program based on the book "I Wanna Take Me a Picture" by Wendy Ewald. My internship is supported by Ogallala Commons Community Internship Program, with funding from the CHS Foundation. 


The goal of my project is to begin a dialogue through photography that addresses why local agriculture is important for the future of our nation and how agriculture based communities are changing. While it is impossible to know what the future holds for the entire nation, this project will look at the direction of agriculture in four specific communities: 

Brownfield, Texas (completed Fall 2011), Nazareth, Texas, (July/August 2012), Campo, Colorado (June 2012), Leoti, Kansas (June 2012), and Atwood, Kansas. (June 2012)

Hope to see you on the road!The youth involved in this project will not only gain photography skills, but also will learn about their community and specific career options in agriculture. This collaborative project will result in a collection of unique images that will add to each of the community’s conversations about the future of agriculture. I am very excited about my travels, working with local youth, and seeing/learning more about each of these unique agricultural communities. Until next time, follow my website and blog as I visit California (for a summer art class) before I begin my intern travels! 

(For additional info, to view my artwork, and follow my travels please visit my website and other blogs: http://www.rebeccajhopp.com  Please feel free to leave comments, I'd love to hear from you!

Kerra Wait, Final Blog (#8)

Hello Again,

For the final time of my 2011 Summer Internship I am writing my final blog. I cannot really say I am going to miss blogging because I always have problems with posting my blog! However I will miss the people I have been working with and also doing my work. This was my first internship I have ever taken and I think it was a great choice and opportunity that I took. When I first started I was very nervous because I would be working with people I did not know and would be doing things that I was not used to. I quickly learned that in order to grow as a person you have to go out and try new things and meet new people, and I came to love it. With my first day of working in my internship I was overwhelmed with meeting new people and gave a list of what I all needed to do. I was very scared! The day after getting a list of things to do, I was leaving to Craig, Colorado for State High School Finals Rodeo and I was in a panic about getting my work done while I was gone. Within a couple days I soon learned how to multi-task with several phones and a laptop. First on my list was to contact all of the Entrepreneurship Fair award winners, and tell them about the award ceremony. Boy was this a challenge- At the fair, each project was signed in. When they signed in they were to put down a phone number that we could contact them at, their actually address and an e-mail we could also send information to if they had one. Well, most of the kids put down their projects made up phone number, address and e-mail. Which left me no way to contact the winners unless I knew them or their parents. However I did some detective work and was able to contact every award winner!

Also while having a list to do for the Baca County Economic Development I also was planning a Connecting Kids to Community Leadership Day with Megan England. I was thinking to myself everyday how am I going to be able to get all of this done! But somehow I did! Everything finally started to fall into place and I was excited about all of the great plans my internship held in my future. It seemed to work out that Megan and I had the same mind set and goals for our Leadership Day. It even worked out that the day before our big Leadership day I was going to Pueblo to the orthodontist and I could pick up all of the supplies and snacks so no special trip was needed. Finally the day arrived and it was a blast! I am looking forward to making this a county wide youth leadership day and getting more youth involved each year.

My next project I was working on my internship was with the Baca County Economic Development. The BCED is working on trying to find a way that we could get some money to fund projects. Several years ago they had came up with an idea of having a county tax of 1%. We were still interested in doing this, so we needed to take some steps to get this process going. Members of the BCED did some research and found out that we had a lot of work to do go get this passed. We finally decided that we would need to do some promoting of our economic development and what our goals are for the county. With that in mind, we thought that it would be a good idea to try to make it to all of the city council meetings and inform them of what we do and what our plans are.
While working on attending the city council meetings I was also involved in working on the Fresh Start Program. With the Fresh Start Program we are trying to get people to clean up their empty lots and build on it. We are trying to show them how they could make money with their lots they are not using and how it could benefit other people in the area. This was quite an experience driving around the towns and writing down the addresses because I learned that in Baca County, we do not really have a set way we have our addresses. So pictures became very important to finding the owner and correct address.

My entire internship was a great experience and I cannot wait until I can get another opportunity to apply again. I feel that I have done my county good with only my few months of work and I want to do more! I hope everybody has a great rest of the year!

-Kerra Wait

Megan England, Blog 8 (Final Post)

The end has arrived! When I started my third internship way back in May, August seemed like a long time away. But, I blinked, and here it is! I am officially a senior in high school, I just completed my harvesting ceremony (see photo below), my internship is over, and I am very excited about what the future holds.
Before I say goodbye for good, however, I will share some of the highlights of my summer’s work.

Major Projects:
-Published Weekly Newsletters for Ogallala Commons
-Assisted with intern coordination
-Completed an intern directory with contact information for all past and present interns
-Contacted past and present Ogallala Commons Interns about 2012 Intern Reunion
-Designed a “Save the Date” invitation for the 2012 Intern Reunion
-Created 2010 and 2011 Intern Project Lists
-Hosted 2nd Annual Connecting Kids to Community Day Camp (4th-8th Grade Students)
-Helped in Planning 2011 Campo Youth Engagement Day

Keys of My Internship

Revitalizing the Community
During my internship, I helped to plan the Campo Watermelon Festival as well as the 2011 Campo Youth Engagement Day. I also hosted the Connecting Kids to Community Camp (see photo below) with help from Baca County Intern Kerra Wait. While these might not seem like tangible ways to revitalize my community, I believe that a community is more than a place, it’s the people who make a place worth inhabiting. There is nothing more important to a community than its youth, and planning these events is a way to get them involved in the revitalization of their communities.

Being a Community Volunteer
I love to volunteer in my community because it’s the best way I can think of to return some of the great things I’ve received growing up here. You can learn more about what I did as a volunteer by reading this post.

Learning and Sharing Stories
Throughout my internship, I learned the stories of almost all of our 2011 interns and was able to compile them in the weekly newsletter as well as create a project list. I also read many blogs from the 2010 and 2011 interns and shared their stories by creating the 2010 project list. I also got to do a little research about all our past interns, and compiled the information here and here.

Finding My Voice
Finding my voice was the biggest part of my internship—hands down.
A large part of my internship dealt with intern coordination, so I spent copious amounts of time on my email and phone (see photo below-me and my trusty partner) with other interns, Darryl Birkenfeld, and Julie Hodges, helping figure out timesheets, blogging, newsletter articles, and various other things. I also spoke at numerous places (formally and informally) about Ogallala Commons and my internship. Locally, Kerra and I spoke during the Connecting Kids to Community camp and on the phone with presenters for our Youth Engagement Day. And of course, I spent several hours on the phone with past interns as I gathered research for an article about the legacy of Ogallala Commons’ interns.
Fostering a Sense of Place
I loved the exploring theme of the second blog we were required to do, as it challenged me to take a deeper look at my community. While most of my work wasn’t specifically for my community, I was challenged as I worked with Darryl, Julie, the other interns, and the Ogallala Commons Board, to keep looking deeper at what makes my community tick. Partly as a result of my internships, I have a desire to become more involved in my local and state politics and helping others learn to appreciate their rural communities as much as we do.

Designing My Career Path
I plan to head to college at Oklahoma Wesleyan University in the fall of 2012 to get my Communications degree. This summer’s internship has helped me to improve my general communication skills as well as provided me with information to show my college professors and future employers. Not to mention the fact that it honed my organizational skills. I was always going in ten different directions, so I had to come up with fast and accurate ways to stay on top of everything!

~~~

When I began my internship this year, I thought I was pretty well-informed. Of course, that was a rather high opinion of myself, and I quickly learned there was so much I didn’t know, that I didn’t know I didn’t know it! (Follow me?)

I learned so much not only about my career path, communicating, and being a leader, but also about the Commons. Listening in during the OC Board Retreat (see photo below) and spending a lot of time on the phone and email with Darryl and Julie, I came to understand a lot more, and I hope to continuing working with Ogallala Commons in the future in some way. Many thanks to Darryl and Julie for being super patient with me as a learned a lot of new ropes, and the Ogallala Commons Board for letting me join them, my family, for putting up with my "office", and also, to my hometown supervisor, Mrs. Nikki, who has always encouraged me to dream big and work hard!

My 2011 Blogs:
Blog 1, Blog 2, Blog 3, Blog 4, Blog 5, Blog 6, Blog 7

Liz Hill Blog #8

One lesson I seem to have to learn over and over again is that everything rarely goes according to plan. I know this, and yet I feel like I’m always just realizing it. Take my internship for example. In the beginning, I thought I would be working on revamping the city’s recycling program, helping the Chamber organize and set up for a news broadcast, and taking on other assorted activities and responsibilities. In the end the only thing I actually did of all those things is help with the news broadcast. Even the assorted activities and responsibilities became something other than what I thought. Which brings me to the second half of the lesson I’m perpetually learning: even though things don’t go according to plan, things almost always end up working for the best. I know that my time as an intern was spent on important projects that will impact my community, or maybe just the life of one individual. But I know my time and effort made a difference, and that’s all that matters in the end.

From the beginning, I said that a main reason I was doing this internship was that it allowed me to give back to my community that’s given me so much. And that’s true; I was able to give back. But it wasn’t a one-sided trade. I learned so many new skills over the course of this summer. The biggest take-away I get is my new-found grant writing ability! Grant writing is hard work; it requires you to be completely organized and have a detailed step-by-step plan. You have to persuade a group to part with a large chunk of money, no easy task especially in this economic climate. I learned that grant writing is much easier if you’re passionate about your cause. If you can make other people see your dream, make it climb off the page and come to life, you stand a much better chance to getting someone to look at it seriously. Grant writing is a skill I can use for the rest of my life, particularly when I go back to College Station this fall. I’m involved in a student organization that relies quite heavily on outside funding, and my grant writing skills can be used for the benefit of the whole organization.

My internship allowed me to meet and interact with lots of different people; a station manager for a local news channel, a board member from a local charitable foundation, city employees, and even a private chicken farmer! I love that I have been able to work with all kinds of people. I also really have begun to appreciate the diversity of our area. Although there are mostly small towns and farms, there are so many different opportunities. It’s not just bankers, farmers, and teachers. There are people with really unique businesses thriving out here. Those unique businesses will hopefully inspire more people to chase their dreams, and open the business they’ve always dreamed of. I think they prove that anything can be successful here with hard work.

Now that I’ve talked about all I’ve learned, I’d like to leave you with a sense of what all I’ve accomplished this summer. The Summer Celebration broadcast was a success! People came from the whole county and really enjoyed the afternoon/evening of food, fun, and TV. I was able to help Felice Acker with her nutrition reading program, and it was great to see the kids trying a different snack every week! I was able to go with Darryl to present the “Tops and Bottoms” program in Hereford to a low income housing community. It was really awesome to see all the activities they provide for the children there. And of course, I was able to help with the park renovation by writing grants. I completed a grant application, a letter of inquiry, and a document that contains all the elements of a grant application. The city can use this document as a jumping off point to complete any more grant applications they may need to complete the park renovation. I participated in a site visit from a representative of the Amarillo Area Foundation last week. And I hope this project is a huge success, because I know that it would make a difference in the lives of so many people, not only in Dimmitt but in all of Castro County.

My Harvesting Ceremony took place last night at the weekly City Council Meeting. I gave a short report on my internship. I talked about the grant project and some other projects I’d spent time on. Darryl presented me with my medallion, and finally David Denman shared an update on the progress of the grant situation. Amarillo Area Foundation is considering funding all of Phase 1 of the renovation. That’s the purchase and installation of new playground equipment. I have had a wonderful summer full of new and exciting experiences, and I can’t wait to share these experiences with others!

Kerra Wait, Blog 7: Community Service

Community Service in any community is a big deal. In big cities your work might not be recognized as much as a small town, but that doesn’t mean that it was any less important. In my county we have a lot of community service. In all of our towns we have elderly people who cannot get out and work as they used to, so other people around them are eager to help out. My county is also big into 4-H, and for those who do not know what that is, it is an organization that teaches leadership, responsibility and so much more. For more information on 4-H you can go to www.4-H.org . In my 4-H club we like to do several community service projects for our town to give back to them for all of their support they give us. This year we chose to do a community clean-up. Our clean-up consisted of picking up trash and pulling weeds in the Pritchett Cemetery, and we usually do mow but since we are so dry the grass did not grow and did not need to be mowed. We also spread around town to pick-up trash, pull weeds and to re-paint signs. When you come into Pritchett we have a few signs that welcome you to our community and they needed some help! Therefore we bought some paint, wood stain and some waterproof sealant and re-painted our sings. Even as small as Pritchett is we have a city park. At the park we have a table with a couple benches, a couple teeter-totters and some swings. They also needed some painting too.
Also I was able to help another community with a project while I was on a Youth Summit in Park County, Colorado. All of the kids that were on the Youth Summit got the chance to help re-vegetate an area where a coal mine once was about ten years ago. To help do that, we were given buckets and a huge pile of sand that I was about eight foot tall and twenty foot long and we had to spread it all out evenly across the site. After that, we were able to help spread native grass and plant seeds to that area. And of course we had to cover all of our hard work with straw so that it would not all blow away. After I was done, I was really tired, but I also felt really good as I was able to help out our earth and another community who I know really appreciated it.

This week I am getting ready for our Baca County Fair and Rodeo and have several projects that I am entered in through 4-H and FFA. Even though I am very busy, I decided to take a day out of my schedule and help out a few of the hard working volunteers. Monday I am going to help some of the best people in the world get all of the 4-H and FFA kids’ projects entered and to their interview on time to be judged. We always have a bunch of kids that have projects to enter, and they all have to be done on the same day! I can’t wait to go help and show my appreciation for how much they do for all of us 4-H and FFA kids.