We hosted a workshop at the community garden on May 10. 12 people attended. This was the first chance the plot renters had a chance to meet each other. Bob Hauer from ISU Extension offered an interesting program on the tools to use in gardening and some of the best practices when planning your garden. I hear he will be coming back later in the summer to help us with pest problems and other issues.
Thanks to Iowa State University Extension, ISED Ventures and the IRS the low income people of Waukon now have the opportunity to get their taxes prepared free of charge. January 10th the community volunteers traveled to Cresco to recieve extensive training and testing to carry out this program.
Already five people have made appointments to take advantage of the program.
cresco to
On september 26, 72 members of the community took part in a poverty simulation. The people that took part were a very diverse group that well represented the community. Some of the people that manned the various stations actually did work in that enviroment.
The simulation represented 4 weeks in the life of people living in poverty. During the first week it was quite interesting watching people who had never been in those situations believing they had it all under control. However, by the second week you could see the frustrations starting to develop.
After the fourth week was completed all of the paticipants were asked to write down a few comments about their experience. The words that appeared the most were,frustrating,confusion,impossible,trapped and stressed. The statment that stood out was “oh my god i had no idea”.
With that statment the night was deemed a success. Now a small group of people who had “no idea” now have an idea and see the need for ideas to help improve the community.
Thanks to the people at Iowa State for putting together such a realistic program and to the Horizons people who implemented it