Bovill, ID

The northen Idaho Horizons communities met in Worley on Wednsday January 23rd for the Idaho Horizons Summit to bring communities and partners togeather.
Members from the Bovill community to attend were Erin Stevenson, Sabrina Meyer, Cynthia Stevenson, Jessica Reed and Shirley Easterday.
Cynthia Stevenson and Jessica Reed did an excellent job of presenting Bovill’s progress report.
The potental partnering groups to attend were:
Hingston Roach Group
Fuels For School
Idaho Department of Commerce
Idaho Rural Partnership
U.of I.
Avista
Community Action Partnership
Idaho Transportation Department
Idaho Heritage Trust
U.S.D.A. Rural Development Center
Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institue
Velocity Inc.
Rural School and Community Trust

Having a daycare in Bovill will give children a safe environment and give parents some peace of mind. The day care action team has met with the Presbyterian Church and with city council members to discuss plans for a new childcare in Bovill. Tammy Hoisington wrote a draft business plan and ran it by our Evenstart instructor, John Yegge. Now it’s time to move forward by looking for grant money. Anyone is welcome to help with this effort!

Hope Hobbs talked to Potlatch about vacant buildings and found out they will sell them, so they are available for potential businesses.

We are working to establish a gas station/minimart in town. There is one in Centralia that is funded through different grants. We sent four community members to the Idado Nonprofit Development Center’s grant writing workshop to find out how to find and apply for grants for a new minimart and for the nonprofit daycare. The grant writing instructor encouraged this and says it’s very possible. A new minimart would address poverty in several ways: it would open up jobs; it would save on gas (now when you need a gallon of milk in the evening, you have to drive ten miles to the next town) and it would keep money in town. – Bovill loses dollars every time someone drives out of town to find services.

Our action teams have the arrows going in the same direction! The Economic team’s work is connected to the community pride team’s work because a clean and green town is more welcoming to new business and activity.

We are getting the word out better about opportunities for community betterment and help for those in need. For example, we’ve distributed fliers about the Evenstart Program
This spreads knowledge of resources that help people in poverty, such the food bank, fuel assistance, and transportation assistance for the elderly, and computer classes. Please help us keep the community informed: If you have something to announce on the blog or in our newsletter, contact Shirley Easterday, Tammy Hoisington, Sabrina Myers, Erin Stevenson, Hope Hobbs, or anyone else in Horizons.

Paul Kimmel from Avista will be coming to our next steering committee meeting on January 21st to discuss possible funding sources to keep the community center’s utilities going. Please come and hear what’s going on!

Our community seems to be thinking more about ways of improving Bovill rather than just having a defeatist attitude of “this is just where i live” and “things won’t change” We are thinking more about possibilities.

We are creating more opportunitiesfor education and skill building for our community members. We have arranged to have computer classes at the community center starting in January.
Bovillcommunity members have attended workshops: the “So you want to start a nonprofit?” workshop and a grant writing workshop.
On Febuary 28th, in cooperation with Elks, we will have an alcohol awareness speaker.

Here are some of the ways we are encouraging connections and communications in Bovill.

Our new Bovill Newsletter is a great success-It took structural change to set it in place and it takes action to keep it going.
if people know whats going on they may be more apt to get involved and ask questions. This enables connections in our community. We’ve purchased postal coverage with Horizons money to keep this and other efforts going.

We see more flyers around town now-it’s good to see what events and resources are available!

We want to do better at supporting our elected officials, giving our “two cents”, and becoming part of the democratic process.
How do we make that a part of Horizons? Our idea is to have at least two steering committee members go to meetings and represent Horizons and find out whats going on.

We need more networking within Bovill and to get our arrows all going in the same direction. We want to gain a wider representation of the community in Bovill horizons. We plan to encourage more church members to come to steering committee meetings. We plan to invite the school principal to meetings. There’s a group that does Santa gifts every year, but they’ve had dwindling volunteers, so we could invite them to Bovill Horizons.

The Community Pride action team hopes in the next 2-3 years to create some beautiful areas in town, places where people can enjoy trees and flowers and sit and relax on community benches. Next summer they hope to partner with the city to do some planting and landscaping along new sidewalks. They have worked with BIG (The nonprofit Bovill Improvement Group) about planting trees. The Community Pride team acquired permission from landowners and from the city (they discussed it with mayor) for improvements. We want people to take pride in our town by creating a more beautiful Bovill. We want people to see and show others what we can accomplish!

Gary and Karen Eggers, Georgia Hunter, and Paula Winter
Fall 2007

Karen and Gary Eggers, Georgia Hunter, and Tara Jones
Fall 2007

· Erin Stevenson, Hope Hobbs, Shirley Easterday, Sabrina Myers, and others have all taken on leadership roles for the first time as part of the Horizons program and they are learning a lot.

· Hope Hobbs was not getting anywhere for four years but now, through Horizons meetings and Horizon’s sponsored workshops, she has found out where to seek resources, how to network, and how to build her skills. She is currently learning how to create a business plan for a craft business that has been sitting on the back burner for many years. She has learned to constantly ask questions and seek solutions. Keep it up Hope!

· Bovill Horizons is helping build leadership in our community, even beyond the Horizons program. For example, Shirley Easterday has been inspired by her involvement in Horizon’s Leadership Plenty and by what she’s learned serving as a Horizons Community Builder to become involved in community government. She ran for Bovill city council (something she had never tried before!) She lost to the incumbent but got one third of the votes. Congrats for putting yourself out there Shirley!

. Sabrina Myers, who is fairly new to Horizons, recently agreed to serve as a co-chair of the steering committee. Thanks Sabrina!

· We can continue to improve the organization and structure of our efforts. Erin Stevenson has enjoyed learning leadership skills, such as getting things organized. She is learning how to organize steering committee meetings, including taking important steps such as calling the treasurer and others ahead of time to set the agenda and make sure they are ready to participate. Thanks Erin!