Community leader program expands

Some 24 community leaders received their community leadership "diplomas" Tuesday night in Mankato as part of Blandin Community Leadership Program that has not been in Mankato for over 10 years.

The Grand Rapids-based Blandin had been conducting community leadership training programs for a couple decades and some 5,500 community leaders in Minnesota have been trained by Blandin.

The Blandin Foundation pays all expenses for the leaders and conduct what amounts to eight days of training, beginning with five in a retreat in Grand Rapids in the fall.

I was part of the Mankato group, that also included such community leaders as MSU Provost Scott Olson, Business owner Todd Snell, YMCA Director John Kind, Voyageur Web owner Yvonne Cariveau, Barb Embacher, from GMG, Anna Thill from the convention and visitors bureau as well as leaders from local government and other nonprofits.

It was an amazing coming together in one room of a lot of people who help make Mankato what it is, and the conversation about the area's strengths and weaknesses was fascinating. I expect great things will be achieved by this simple but important meeting of some of the brightest minds in the community.

The aim of the Blandin program is to help leaders identify the relative "health" of their community, as measured by eight dimensions of a healthy community, and to do something to improve the health of the community and solve problems.

It's a program I found to be extremely helpful and worthwhile.

Blandin typically focuses on communities in rural Minnesota smaller than Mankato. But in a partnership with the Bush Foundation, Blandin has been able to offer the program to Mankato, and in fact, is looking to organize two more such leadership programs this fall.

It's an unusual opportunity for Mankato, and Blandin is looking for 48 more leaders to recruit into two separate retreats. That will bring the number of Mankato leaders going through the program up to 72, a critical mass that Blandin feels helps get things done. A similar program was established in Duluth a few years ago that gave birth to many success stories.

There is more information on the program at blandinfoundation.org.

The group of leaders who graduated Tuesday have identified three community issues to mobilize on: Community physical health and childhood obesity: Self-esteem of young girls, and getting more people of diverse backgrounds more involved in community decisionmaking bodies.

I'll be updating the progress of each group on this blog as well as in the print edition of The Free Press as we make progress.