Cottonwood, ID

By involving the entire community, via study circles, leadership
training and the action group meetings it better addresses the issues
and situation within the community.

One of the projects from the Horizons program was the development
of a community center. At the city council meeting one individual stated
that he had heard no complaints about the current building. The co-chairs
present were able to present documented information from hundreds of
participants that stated the public did feel they wanted a new center.
This type of community involvement is what is needed to get things
accomplished in a small community. Additionally, by utilizing the program
we were able to work with several smaller local communities that
assisted in merging all of them together.

The University of Idaho gave us the energy and technical support we
wouldn’t have had. More importantly, they gave us the “thinking” that it
(community vision) could be that way. Horizons would never have gotten
off the ground-we wouldn’t have known how to plan, how to move forward,
what to do.

An extra big thanks to our Coach, Kathee Tifft who’s always been available to help us in all that we’ve accomplished so far. We do hope we can continue to keep in touch with Kathee as we continue on realizing our communities’ vision. THANKS, KATHEE!

A Long Term Care expert from AARP DC was visiting Boise on June 27th and
participated in a conference call with Cathy McDougall, Associate State
Director, AARP Idaho and representatives of the Intergenerational
Relationships action team to talk about national trends and connecting
our local efforts to additional resources.

AARP Idaho Boise State University are contributing expertise to the
Prairie Horizon Long Term Care Project.

It is confirmed that the BSU students will design and AARP will
administer a Long Term Care needs assessment for Cottonwood. The survey
will be approved by BSU. This will begin in September and AARP will
work with Prairie Horizons on the details.

Horizons shows much promise for our communities and local organizations. Many organizations that have really taken off and shown much support for the communities are our Fire Fighting Organizations. One such group that was started by a vision and has given back to the community is the Keuterville Cowboy Wildland Firefighters. This group started because of commitment, desire, grants and a purpose to help protect our locally owned lands. Many other fire organizations such as the rural fire departments also show commitment and dedication to protecting our communities. These groups are crucial to making a community proud, building great friendships and supporting each other in tough times.
Horizons is taking off with dreams, ideas and projects that are put into action to help make our communities a better place to live. Support all your local organizations and please give Horizons the chance to give us the tools to make more dreams come true!

The Prairie Area has now upgraded with the Horizons program. We are now apart of the blogging world. The community can look at this blog site and see what’s happening in our area.