Ground Level Hits the Ground Running

Some of our staff received an email from Dave Peters, at Minnesota Public Radio, last week. Part of it read: "Sitting in your offices last summer and fall as we planned this out, I would have been tickled to think it would go as well as it did."

We couldn't agree more.

Nearly 200 people joined MPR and Initiative Foundation staff in Long Prairie last Thursday night as they held a community forum to explore Todd County's future.

This forum illustrates how well things have been going for Ground Level, a new project that MPR, the Initiative Foundation and Bush Foundation all banded together to create.

The purpose of the project is to see how people are trying to make their communities better places to live, work and play. The Initiative Foundation is doing this by guiding them through the HCP program while MPR is exploring each community through a variety of mediums including videos, pictures, sound bites, blogs and articles. They want to reach the people on the ground level to hear what is happening in the areas they live in and to get conversations started.

• In January MPR started with Baldwin Township (in Sherburne County just south of Princeton) and focused on its growing population - which has created transportation, housing, planning and lifestyle issues. Reporters began by immersing themselves in the Baldwin community to learn as much as they could. Learn more about the results...
• In April MPR began their work in Todd County, focusing on their aging population and concern for the well-being of residents - trying to uncover the answers they have to support an aging and changing population. Learn more about the results...

We are excited to be a part of this project as we ALL work to make these communities better!

To read more about Ground Level and join the conversation, visit the MPR website: http://minnesota.publicradio.org.