Rolette, ND

How can we encourage our alumni and others to come back to live and work and thrive in their hometown?  This was the same question Patti Knobbe and the rest of the folks who formed the Norfolk Area Recuiters of Norfolk, Nebraska asked themselves and came up with a good answer:  Recruit! Recruit! Recruit! They have developed a recruiting program that has worked very well for their area, and Patti was in Rolette April 9 to present to all who gathered at the Valle Lutheran Church, what they did and how they did it.   We all went home not only with good food in our tummys–prepared by the Rolette Dollars for Scholars–but with good food for thought.  Through her presenation we learned several ways to begin a “Back to North Dakota” recruiting program in all our hometowns. 

The American Legion Thursday nite bingo is getting out of hand.  The pot is big and so is the crowd. They need people to be floor walkers, help with clean up,  bingo card sales, and the concession stand. The Legion does so much for the veterans and their families and not to mention how much they support our students.  If you are free for the next thursday and want to help. Please contact Gordy Boucher; lets help them have a great great bingo nite for all they have done for us; our community and our country.

How do you teach the children about money?  This is hard to begin with but if you have poor management skills to begin with it is even harder.  This Horizons group, thanks to the efforts of Janie Jung, Pat Beaver and the local school are going to tackle this problem.  Janie found the game “Cash Flow” and brought it to the director asking the group to purchase it and she would teach it to the children.  Pat Beaver volunteered her family to be the guinea pigs over Easter weekend; and thank goodness she did. The game is more involved then the advertisements lead you to believe.  Janie then took the game is and hooking up with the 21st century/ boys and girls club to “play” the game after-school at the school.  This will give the kids a snack, and Janie a stipend to play it with them. So all are happy so far! We will keep you posted.  I, personally, plan on playing a few rounds to try and pick up some better habits.   May I will be the next millionaire in Rolette…… wait maybe I would be the first….Ha! Ha!

The e-bay class at the Rolette Technology center was a great success.  Dan from Bowbells was a great teacher with real eBay experience.  He show how to research items to set the right price, add an item to sell on eBay with a good picture and how to use paypal and ship the item that was sold.  So much useful information.  This class taught students how to make a little extra money selling items.  Items sold were new and old, big and small, expensive and cheap.  Congratulations to the students for learning a new skill that they can pass along to others.  Thank you to Dan for bringing all of his experience to Rolette and sharing it.  It would not have been possible without the efforts of Karen Armstrong who organized the class.eBay

Its hard to know who is working harder  during this session of Leadership Plenty; the instructors or the students.  With a smaller groupof people involved, the dynamics are much different…and all are working their brains hard.  We are entering the 4th session; which we have a meal plan for. Hopefully the food will revitalize our tired brains.  See we are working hard!

A group of concerned citizens in the Rolette community is taking it upon themselves to remodel the memorial halls kitchen.  This is being done to increase use of the facility.  It is also being done with the questionable blessing of the American Legion Post, the auxiliary, the city and the county commissioners. We do have the full support of RADA and they are our parent organization.  Just to get permission to start this project has been strange.  The county owns the building, the city pays all the bills, and the legion rents it!  Crazy how life evolves.  Gordy has given us his blessing although he doesn’t know why we would want to start this without any money.  The city and the county also give us their blessings and blessing alone.   Although the city offered their tax id number for us; so they are our fiscal agent.  The thought process has boiled down to getting actual costs and estimates.  Now the process of finding the right grant for the right project begins.  Therefore we are calling ourselves the “Kitchen Nightmare”.  Not to be confused with the popular show that can be found at http://www.fox.com/kitchennightmares/.  Keep checking back for more info. and progress.  I am sure there will be a time when your help will be needed.

Horizons is sponsoring Ebay training. The classes will begin March 6^th at 6:30 pm in the Rolette Mall computer lab. There will be 3 classes, each on Thurs nights. All participants will be setting up Ebay account, a paypal account, buy an item thru Ebay and sell and item on Ebay. Other topics will include calculating shipping, using photos and bid retractions. Pre-registration is required. Class size is limited. The charge is $25.00.  Scholarships available.
Call the Rolette County Extension Office at 477-5671.

This is us during our initial blog training in February.  We had fun learning how to blog and even though some of us look a little more confused than others, you can tell by scrolling through our blog site that we all really did learn a lot. 

I see that you are working on another class for LeadershipPLENTY!  Excellent and I wish you much luck.  I know that it will be great - you did such a nice job with the first class in your community.  I would also encourage anyone reading this to get in touch with the organizers to consider the training. 

P.S. Nice work on this blog!

Lynette Flage - ND Horizons Director

A Gathering Place is being planed for Rolette.  This place will be a “coffee house” style meeting place for all ages.  One goal is to expand a current business of Rolette.  A gather place is one of the Action Items from the Action Forum which is a result of the Horizon’s Study Circles.  The Horizon Directors believe the the skills learned in the Leadership Plenty training can be used to make this action item a reality.