Waukon, IA

Once at both a Study Circle session and a LeadershipPlenty session, an individual in poverty was brought to tears of frustration.  She was feeling the group was not headed in a direction that would help her personally and yet not able to put to words what we could do to help her, help herself.  Part of her frustration was the inability to get a job because she felt people judged her and held her poorness against her.  In the end, before leaving the second tearful session, she was able to put into words a radio script that will be taped using different voices, accents, ages, gender… Look around - that guy over there…. that lady next door - they might not look like you, sound like you, or think like you - but really…. deep down you’re more alike than different.  Don’t believe me?   Say hi to someone new today…… A Welcoming Waukon is a Strong Waukon

Monthly meetings have been setup at tha Allamakee Extension Office to provide residents help in managing their personal finances.

Some of the objectives are; setting goals, developing a spending plan, organizing personal records, how to manage credit,  identifying sources of financial information and much more.

A local landlord has offered the tenants a 25.00 discount on their rent if they participate. Also Horisons is helping provide day care to those that attend and the classes are free.

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