Blandin building the community

By Jerry Ness | The Daily Journal

Published Wednesday, April 2, 2008

I am excited to be one of 24 individuals selected to participate in the Blandin Community Leadership Program. The week long retreat is being held from March 31-April 4 in Grand Rapids, with follow up dates in June and September.

The Blandin Foundation makes a substantial investment of both time and money. In return participants are committed to ongoing involvement in developing and sustaining the health of their community. This will be the second group to complete the training from Fergus Falls in the last three years. This column shares information from Blandin’s literature to give you an idea of how the Blandin Community Leadership Programs functions.

The Blandin Foundation is a private independent foundation based in Grand Rapids. Its purpose is to strengthen rural Minnesota communities, particularly the Grand Rapids area, through grants, leadership programs and public policy initiatives.

Passion, vision, organizing to effect change. Working toward a common goal. Making a difference. Building a healthy community. This is how people in rural Minnesota define community leadership.

Rural communities survive—and thrive—when leaders take responsibility and deal with change effectively. Training community leaders, supporting them and providing ongoing opportunities for growth is what the Blandin Community Leadership Program is all about.

Since 1985, the Blandin Community Leadership Program has provided intensive leadership training to more than 4,200 rural community leaders in Minnesota. The program is nationally recognized and works with emerging and established leaders in rural communities to deepen their understanding of community dynamics and strengthen their skills for initiating and managing change.

The Blandin Community Leadership Program serves rural Minnesota communities. Individuals are recruited from selected communities and become part of a 24-person community cohort. Each community cohort represents a wide variety of networks including businesses, nonprofits, diverse populations, government, healthcare and education.

Recruitment efforts focus on individuals who are actively involved in community life, credible and open-minded, open to risk-taking, adept at initiating and managing change, passionate about mobilizing others, and willing to work collaboratively to promote healthy community.

The program uses highly experiential learning techniques and is centered on three core competencies of community leadership that are essential for building and sustaining healthy community. The first of the three competencies is “framing.” The definition of framing is recognizing and defining the community’s issues and opportunities in ways that lead to effective action.

The second is “social capital,” which is developing and maintaining relationships that allow us to work together across our differences. And the third competency is “mobilizing,” which focuses on engaging a critical mass in taking action to achieve a specific outcome or outcomes.

The Blandin Community Leadership Program looks at eight common characteristics of a healthy community: economic opportunity, lifelong learning, valuing diversity, spiritual, cultural and recreational opportunities, safety and security, environmental stewardship, community leadership and infrastructure and services.

The skills addressed in the program are not new to most participants; the way these skills are applied to community settings adds to the effectiveness of even highly experienced leaders. These skills include communications that foster understanding, efficiency and cooperation, conflict management, networking that brings together people, ideas, and solutions, stakeholders analysis, and individual leadership development planning.

I’m looking forward to learning new skills, meeting more community members and, most of all, listening and planning with other participants on how to improve our community.

Jerry Ness is the superintendent of the Fergus Falls School District. His column appears Wednesdays.