 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We are a webinar. We cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries, librarians, library staff. The show is free and open to anyone to watch, both our live show here on Wednesday mornings and our archive recordings. They're all available on our website. We do the show live on Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. central time. But if you can't join us on Wednesdays, that's what our recordings are all there for. You can always go there onto our website and see everything back to when we started in January 2009 and go all the way back there and watch any of our recordings. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, book reviews, mini-training sessions, demos, basically just anything that may be of interest to the library world. We are happy to have on the show. And we have sometimes our Nebraska Library Commission staff will do presentations. And sometimes we have guest speakers, as that is what we have this morning. Our topic for this week Encompass Live is, as you can see there on the starting slide, opportunity, collaboration, engagement. And this is about University of Nebraska-Lincoln's extension office, their community vitality initiative, something new. Honestly, I'm not sure how new, but we'll find out from our speakers. On the line with us, we have three staff in the extension, Connie Hancock. Hello, Connie. Good morning. Good morning. And you are joining us from where exactly were you? I am in Dubuque, Iowa. Right, yes. All our speakers this morning are remotely, and they're all not together. They're all out and about elsewhere. So Connie's in Iowa. Kim Behrens, where are you at today? I'm in Stanton County. Actually, I am in my office. You're actually at one. I'm probably the lucky one. And then we have our second Connie, who is running our slides for us this morning as well. Connie, how are you? Reimers, is that how you pronounce that? Reimers Hill, yep. Where are you at? I'm actually in my office too. So I'm feeling lucky like Kim today here at the Kimmel Education and Research Center in Nebraska City, Nebraska. OK, great. So we've got all through them online. And I'll just tell us about this new project they're doing through the university. So I'll just hand over to you guys to go ahead and take it away with your presentation. Great. Thank you, Krista. We really appreciate this time with your group. And I'm going to warn you a little bit. We do want this to be interactive. So we want this to be just like this first slide says, really an opportunity itself as we view community vitality and this initiative that we're launching through the University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension. And it's all really about collaboration and engagement. So just as we want the community vitality initiative to be an opportunity for collaboration engagement, we also want this webinar to be the same thing. Because it's really a great opportunity for us to network with a group that we don't know a whole lot about necessarily. I mean, some people have worked with libraries in our counties. Some people have not. So this is a great opportunity for us. Before I get started too much, I just want to take a minute to talk about a little bit about what extension is. And in extension, we're part of the University of Nebraska Lincoln system. But we're really faculty and staff that are located on our Nebraska-wide campus. So we actually have people from the University of Nebraska working all across the state. And our job and our goal really is to bring relevant research-based information to our communities that can be used. And the community vitality initiative is one of the ways that we're working to really grow this part of what we do. We want to help communities really reach their desired futures and be a partner in that. We do a lot of different types of programs in extension. And a lot of times people maybe recognize us more for traditional agriculture work. And we still do a lot of that with cattle and corn and soybeans. And 4-H is a great part of extension working with young people and communities. But we also do a lot of leadership development, entrepreneurship development. And the community vitality initiative is one of the pieces of that puzzle. So that's what we're going to focus on a little bit today. I would also welcome anyone to ask any questions that can be typed into the chat box. And so please at any time if you do have a question, let us know so that we can answer those questions and address any questions you might have. So wherever you live in Nebraska, you have the University right there, too, as a partner in your community. So that's something I want to stress because I know not everybody always knows about extension and what we do. And we've already been through the introductions. So there you can see a picture of the three of us. I do want to say that Connie and Kim are both co-leading the community vitality initiative. So they've just been fantastic because it's quite a wonderful project, but it's a big project, too, because it doesn't just involve extension. It's not internal. It's actually very external. And we're going to talk a little bit about that with the partnerships and sort of the creation of doing things maybe differently than what they've been done in the past. And basically with the community vitality initiative, the opportunity here is to help Nebraska communities expand capacity to be vibrant, prosperous places where people want to live and raise families. So we recognize that in Nebraska, we have some challenges around keeping people in rural places and really helping grow those rural places. And what we want to do at the community vitality initiative is sort of turn the tide and really help those Nebraska communities in ways that work for them, in the ways that they want to grow and expand, but really be those prosperous places, places where people want to live, they want to play, they want to raise their families and where they want to be. And they can do whatever they want to create their desired futures. And Extension wants to be a partner in that. Now, the other piece of the community vitality initiative puzzle is what's called the Rural Futures Initiative. And the Rural Futures Initiative is also a university initiative, but it encompasses the entire university system. So the Med Center, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, University of Nebraska at Carney and Curtis. And we're working very closely with the Rural Futures Initiative to really bring that research-based information and our capacity to the communities because we already have a strong presence in those communities in Extension. And so the Rural Futures Institute, you may hear that term as well. And that's just another entity that's working with us in CVI, as we call community vitality initiative, to really help Nebraska be the best that it can be and continue to grow and prosper and do great things and be a place where people want to live. The Community Vitality Initiative fosters the future of Nebraska through community-centered capacity building. And we recognize that the communities themselves really have to be the leader in all of this and build their capacity. And it is really about them creating their desired future. We don't want to come to them and say, here are some programs. You know how we have here are some programs, but rather have it come from them so that we can help them. And it's really a community-centered sort of process. So it's focused around what they're wanting to do and where they're wanting to go and to grow. Educational opportunities that are relevant and research-based. We really are in extension or striving to be very timely and relevant. So all communities are very different and have different needs and expectations and different desires. And so that does mean we have to be flexible and relevant to the needs and desires of those communities, but also bring that research piece to the table. So what has worked in other states, other communities, other countries even, but what's research-based so that we can continue to grow in an incredible way and bring information maybe that's new and different, but also that's worked in other places. I mean that research piece is something that the university can bring to the table. Collaborative networks to address opportunities and challenges of rural people and places. My focus area actually is in leadership and innovation. Wherever there's a challenge, there's also an opportunity. And sometimes we don't always see that. So really we want to be able to address those challenges and find the opportunities in those challenges so that we can help form these collaborative networks, be a part of these collaborative and knowledge networks and really make places strong and vibrant and continue to help them grow on a trajectory that works best for them. But also recognizing that we want collective impact. It really takes a village during the small child. A lot of us have heard that. I think it's the same in community vitality. We really want to work together with partners so that we can all make a difference together and walk this path together and maybe put our resources and our strengths together in new and different ways and then what we've even thought of in the past. And I think that's what's so exciting about this webinar, for example. Libraries are such a great asset in our communities. I know here in Nebraska City, the library is a place where a lot of our middle schoolers go after school. A lot of our people in our area here in Southeast Nebraska, my kids, for example, in daycare, they go to the library once a week for programs. And it's just been in these two communities that I have a touch in or live my life in, a person I think sometimes takes for granted what the libraries bring to the table. And they're such great resources. And so when Connie Hancock talked about this webinar, I know personally I just got excited because libraries do a lot for our communities. And so maybe it's looking at our networks and our knowledge and what we do and our strengths and combining it in different ways to continue to help our communities. One thing we realize is that this community vitality initiative, it is relatively new. While we've been working in communities a long time, this is really our effort to sort of bring it all together under one umbrella. But we do recognize it's gonna be an evolutionary process. And we really want it to be because it can't be a one-size-fits-all type of thing. There's no just easy sort of formula or recipe for all this. It is gonna evolve over time and it's gonna change over time. And it's a really important part because for it to be successful and relevant and nimble, we're really gonna have to make sure it evolves over time and continues to change. And in fact, when we kind of thought about a concept paper for the community vitality initiative, one of the things we did is really looked at business modeling and what happens around successful businesses and how we can pivot a little bit faster in the work that we're doing. While we worked at doing some initial planning, we wanna kind of use a minimum viable product sort of design. So how do we do that initial planning but get the requirements in place, look at some analysis and design, implement, test, evaluate, get feedback and involve partners the whole time. Our model would look a little different than this but the concept is sort of the same. And continue to evolve it and change it based on feedback and sort of real time information and data and evaluation. So we can continue to tweak it and make what we're doing better and better and better rather than just come with a full program, for example, like, okay, we have this great leadership development program. We'd love to teach in this community. That's not really the goal. The goal more is how do we plan with these communities together, develop and launch what they're needing, test it and continue to evolve and innovate it over time in a quicker fashion, in a faster way that makes sense and is very relevant to the needs of those communities. So I do wanna kind of open it up a little bit and we wanna hear from you. So again, type your messages in or I know you can be unmuted too and use your microphone if you'd rather do that. But one of the questions that we have for this group in particular is what opportunities do you see for potential partnerships and collaborations to help Nebraska communities? And what ideas do you have that could be incorporated into kind of the community vitality initiative or how might we partner in a way that maybe you're doing already or something we could work at doing? So just a little brainstorming, virtual brainstorming would be great. Yeah, so if this is Krista again, if anyone does have any thoughts, maybe things you've already been doing in your communities or in your library, type into the questions section or if you have, you know, wanna know more about it or something, you can type in there. If you have a microphone, just let me know and I can hit unmute and let you share your thoughts that way. So I just kind of have, you said that I know this is a new program, a new project. Have you been out in the communities already? Is there some of these things that are already going on? Some of these? That's a great question, Krista. And I wanna make sure I'm clear on this. And, you know, Connie and Kim jump in as well. You know, I don't need to be the sole answer here because, you know, just like even when he introduced us, we're all three in different places and different. So, you know, Extension has been involved in communities this year. Actually, we're celebrating our 100th year of Extension. And, you know, our goal really is not to be the best kept secret anymore. We kind of joke about that, but it's also kind of a point of pain for us because we have been working in communities. And a lot of times when people think of Extension, they think of traditional ag, but that's a really important part of community vitality. You know, for, especially for states like Nebraska, it's a very strong part of community vitality. And I guess I would say that, you know, we've been doing this work for 100 years, but it's time for us to maybe do it a little differently and maybe bring some different, you know, ideas or concepts to the table to really kind of focus on the communities themselves in a different way. And we'll talk about some of the outcomes and some of the conversations that have already happened around community vitality in this initiative. So we've been there, we've been helping, but we wanted, we just kind of want to short up and tweak it a little bit to make it, you know, more focused. Mm-hmm. Okay, we actually have, or we have some commission staff here that I know you've been working with that are watching in another room. I'm going to unmute them right now. You guys are unmuted, you can go ahead. Joanne or whoever's there? Hi there, it's Mary Jo. Can you hear me? Yes, we can, go ahead. Okay, great. I just wanted to mention that we're very pleased to be working with some extension educators to do educational programming for library customers right in the library. Right now we're planning that financial education project and maybe Connie, you'd like to talk a little bit about that and that might get people's ideas flowing. Sure, I would be glad to. It's an online curriculum that the library commission through your BTOP grant have invested in and Joanne and Mary Jo have reached out to extension to help kind of facilitate that conversation and potentially work with those, I think it's 13 libraries across the state that will be doing some kickoff work, will be doing some work around financial literacy through a period of time and then help with that celebration. So our role is really to help support and provide some expertise in that arena. And one of the other things that is, as we're talking about this, I really see that the library is one of the anchor institutions in our local communities. It really is a hub for a lot of activities that go on whether that be from an adult perspective or a youth perspective. And think about the possibilities of partnering, whether that's with extension or the Chamber of Commerce or some other entities in our communities to really do some big and bold things that are kind of outside the box, things that we're not traditionally aware of doing. And I really see that the library is that hub of activity for a lot of things, particularly around the youth area. And as we get into our outcomes, which I actually have three of them that Kim is gonna talk about, youth is a big component of this. And as we think about young people returning home or coming to our communities, making sure that they have really good experiences and have connections and mentors because we need to grow our communities. And we realize that the next generation of young people is really where that population is gonna be. It's not gonna be my age of people that's gonna grow that community. Connie, this is Kim. If I could chime in just a little bit. One of the other programs that we've got currently running through many of the libraries in Nebraska right now is a 4-H youth program that addresses ag literacy and science. And there's a set of six lessons, I think, that you can choose from robotics, electronics, electricity. And we've rolled that out to many of the libraries. So some of you may have already partnered with 4-H Project and these are targeted towards youth. So we want to not only reinforce the importance of science, engineering and technology and in our communities, but to bring the youth together and continue the learning over the summer. That's the great thing about 4-H. And when school's out, they're our kids. So that's something that we would really like to do and a place where we want to be. So we've partnered with some already. And if we have more interest in that, you can contact one of us and I'll get you in touch with Jackie Stephens who coordinated that program out of Cedar County. But that's just a small thing that we're rolling out this summer. Thanks, both of you. This is Mary Jo again. You know, I just think these are both great examples. Both the example with the youth in the summer reading program which is focused on science and technology this summer, but also the example of working with adults in communities across the state through the FINRA Financial Education Foundation grant. So these are just both, I think, terrific examples of how there is a role for the library staff and a role for the extension educators. And it's two separate roles, but when they're together, they can do programming that they couldn't do separately. So I think it's great to be thinking about what some of these examples are. Yeah, I agree. And just from the mom perspective, you know, with my kids going to the Platsmith Library once a week, you know, it's really great to know as a parent that when my kids are in daycare, they're learning. You know, they're going there and they're learning. They come home, they're really excited. You know, my daughter brought home a book. She's brought home several different projects that they've done during that time. And, you know, it's a great, I think, a great value to our communities. And I think, as it was mentioned too, that whole education's still in the summer. You know, so it's not like they're just going there, you know, and playing or something. I mean, playing is good too, but there's actually continued learning in the summertime, which I think is fantastic for our young people and our families and our communities. We do have one comment from the audience too. Rachelle McPhilips is on, she's at Columbus Public Library. And she says, they've done some things with Extension Office doing career education planning and cooking programs with the teens. Their children's librarian partnered with the Extension Office for summer programming for fourth and fifth graders. And they cooked and talked about digestion and other things related to that. So, got some cooking lessons and then found out what happens after you eat it, I guess. That's cool. You know, another conversation that we're having internal at this point is around cultural diversity and how we can do some things to build relationships, but we can also learn about the different cultures. As you mentioned, the food piece, there's some really cool ideas out there to learn about the culture via food or art or whatever. And so, again, that's an opportunity for us to partner up with not only Extension, but then what else in the community is dealing with or trying to build those relationships around cultural diversity. And so, bringing in a steering team of people to have that conversation makes it just much more richer and it doesn't put a burden on any one entity to be the sole leader or the sole trainer of something, but you rely upon then a team of people to build that experience. And it's nice, like, if you have an idea of something that maybe someone at the Extension Office could then, what you're saying, implement it for you. You know, you've got something you want to do with the library, but you're not sure how do I get this program going? Who's going to teach it? How am I going to know what the curriculum, so to speak, is going to be? That'd be a good resource for the librarians to come to you guys. Correct. Yeah, and I think that's actually a good point to bring forward, Krista, too, is how do we facilitate this? So I know, like here, when I brought up the middle school thing in Nebraska City, one of my colleagues, Dr. Deb Weissenkamp, does a lot of the science, technology, engineering, and math programming for youth, the STEM programming. So I think she's thought about, well, maybe it's better for me to teach something after school at the library versus the school or even here at our Kimmel Education and Research Center, because that's where the kids are just going. That's sort of where they congregate until somebody comes to pick them up and whatnot. So I think it is just facilitating those conversations and having a good process to do that. Yeah, they go in there anyways. Might as well, yeah, get to them. Yeah, I can't think of that. OK, we don't have any other comments that came in while we were chatting. I know webinars that I love them, and I'm always like, oh, how do we, you know, so seriously, though. I mean, if people do have more questions, ideas, I mean, even just sharing what people have been sharing is great, because with our state, we're so big. Sometimes it's hard to know what other communities are doing. So it's really good just to get those ideas just to stimulate some additional thought. And we do have libraries and extensions throughout the state, so that's, I think, what makes the potential this really cool. Well, with that, I will advance to the next slide here, and I believe Kim is going to. Oh, I think it's my turn. The discussion is right. I have you here, Kim. OK, pass the mic. So I know we've had a few questions, but I'm going to kind of navigate us through some of the different areas that we've expanded out into. And hopefully, after we talk about this, it will plant some seeds so that you guys can be thinking about how and what programs we can partner with and just give you some more ideas. So initially, this process has been going on, and Connie Reimers-Hill was on the very beginning when we were putting together the white paper and a lot of the credit for this organizational piece goes to her and her team. But in the process, if you'll advance the slide, Connie, we're going to go to the three outcome areas. And the areas that we're concentrating on, the teams, if you will, are engaging youth and young adults. We talked a little bit about that earlier. Our second area will be developing and growing business. And the third will be, or I should say currently is, creating a 21st century community. These are the three areas that right now the community vitality initiative is targeting to advance projects in and collaborate with outside entities. So we're going to talk a little bit more about the engaging youth piece. Connie, if you'd forward that, please. Right now, the youth, we're talking about youth and young adults. And what we're hoping is that they will pursue opportunities for careers back in our Nebraska communities and become contributing members. We also want our communities to have a healthy structure and foster community improvement and hopefully create a shared vision with the youth and the young adults coming back. And my area that I focus in primarily is youth career development and workforce prep. So this is kind of the area that I work in here in Stanton County in the northeast corner, especially part of the Nebraska area. And we're really working hard to get our kids to see that there is a future for them, a place for them to come back to and a home for them to feel good about bringing their business, bringing their families back. We've got some really great projects and programs out there with entrepreneurship and leadership programs, that will help the youth discover career choices. And we do a lot of programming areas across the state, numerous ones that hopefully will get those kids to see the benefits of staying home and staying local. And part of that too is also training the parents and the grandparents to realize that there's a benefit staying here and the best jobs are not across the state lines, that they're right here at home. So we're trying very, very hard to develop those local opportunities and make those relationships very meaningful, give the kids opportunities for leadership and teach them the techniques and the skills that they need to come back and help with the city council or learn what it is to be in state and county government and things that they can contribute, not only on the local level, but as you move up through the opportunities through the state. So increasing that community connectedness, I think, is the key. And not only with the youth, but we try to work very hard with the parents to make them see that also. And that's one of the areas that we're concentrating on with youth and adult. If you'll slide to the next. We do a lot of entrepreneurship, a lot of business development. We have different programs that we've done. We have a making money camp. There's a lot of ESI, we call it, entrepreneurship programs across the state. We have an international ESI curriculum that is wonderful, bar none. There's nothing in the nation that can compare to it. We work a lot with matchmaking mentoring programs. One of the things that we do across the state, there's a program called the Area Health Education Career Centers. There's four across the state and I'm affiliated with the one in the Northeast. They do a lot of mentoring programs where they bring or internship programs and it's mostly in the health career area. But we partner with them across the state and do a lot of programs. I work with a local student group here, the health career student group, and come in and work with them as a guest speaker, bring programs in. They take the kids out to the hospitals as an example and let them actually see what a degree in nursing and a program in nursing or a job in nursing and dentistry or whatever it might be for the kids to actually experience it, see the hospitals and everybody have been really open to letting us do that. Those mentoring programs are popping up all over and if we can get the kids to see the benefit of staying home and young adults staying home, I think it's great. The community awareness, every community right now is trying to be progressive and show what they got. Things that they can entice people to come, what they do best. There's, the Norfolk community does a great job with bringing young adults back and they've got a recruitment program that they work with. There's all types of things across the state. All our communities are looking to bring people back and how to strengthen their communities. And the community vitality initiative can be a huge asset to that. And helping train and connect our young adults is huge. We have wonderful job opportunities. Nebraska came through the recession in great shape, actually pretty good shape. And there's a lot of opportunities out there. We just have to open their eyes and help them make the connection back into our communities and see the benefit. So that's one of the things that we're proud of what we're doing but we need a lot more collaboration and we're bringing in outside partners and trying to bring programs that will cross cut all cultures and diversity also. So, okay, Kim. Oh, yes. Back on the engaging youth and young adults, those four topics are really the areas that the team will be focusing on. And so if you think about your own interest and passion and if it happens to be around this engaging youth and young adults in these four areas, we're trying to create programming that we can take statewide. And so if you would like to be involved in any of that, we would certainly welcome your input into those four. We've got committees currently with folks that have identified chairs and it's not just extension folks. It's other folks from community colleges and other agencies that have taken on that role as well. So we'll talk about how to be involved later on but I wanted to clarify that these are really the four topics that we will be potentially focusing on and having more conversation around. Exactly. And as we visit, there's two other areas we'll visit about just a little bit and that goes the same invitation is there. So if there's something, some area that really excites you, we can absolutely make the connection for you and plug you into that group that is focusing in that area. Thanks Connie. Okay, well let's talk a little bit about growing Nebraska business. That's one of the other areas. We want our rural Nebraska businesses to grow and develop and part of that is to create new businesses and strengthen the businesses that are there. We want to retain our jobs for rural Nebraska and increase the number of young people out in the Nebraska job market. So it's very important and it's a very important area that this is addressing. The Ag and Natural Resources is an enterprise that's starting and flourishing in a lot of the communities and certainly to expand the ag base and profit centers across the state. We'll talk a little bit about, they'll work on food access and quality and production processing. Nebraska does a lot of food processing across the state in the Ag and Natural Resources area. So that's a huge area too. Ag and agri-tourism opportunities that will attract people. We've got a good agri-tourism group that is addressing some of these ideas and working on possibilities of increasing the tourism opportunities. There's a lot of tourism groups across the state too, so I think there's a lot of areas that might be something that you would like to be involved in hopefully. And then the resources are transferred for wealth and retention and sustainability. How is that gonna work? What might be most important? How can we keep the resources here and build and grow using those resources with Nebraska businesses? So Connie, feel forward me then to, we'll talk a little bit about the entrepreneurial and economic ecosystem. This is one of the areas that they're going to focus on. Another would be transitioning community and ag businesses. We've got a lot of community and ag businesses with aging owners, I guess, I guess that's what I wanna say. And so how can we transition those two with some of our young adults and get them to mentor or match up and maybe bring those young people back and show the value of transitioning those and keeping those businesses vital in the community. They're working on an answer guide, a business answer guide and they're possibly trying to collaborate with the Real Futures Initiative and that Connie had addressed earlier. So that's a project that they're working on right now. They're trying to develop a model for best practices for offering work-based learning experiences in real communities, internships and job shadowing. That will come through here. You will also see, which we didn't really talk about, but there are some things that may go through all three of the areas and this would be something too that maybe would partner with part of the youth programming or youth and adult, youth and young adult programming too with a job shadowing and internship creation. And then they wanna be very innovative as they explore online programs with customized consulting. How is that gonna look? If you have a love for technology this might be just the spot for you but that might be something to consider and that's one of the areas that's kind of surfaced right now. And as we transition and go we're just starting this is just a beginning effort. This will change and adapt over time as the issues change and the needs grow but these are the areas that the growing Nebraska business group is addressing right now. We're out there trying to support our entrepreneurs with opportunities with, there's a lot of opportunities in the food systems, natural resources area in the profit center. We talked a little bit about that earlier. Facilitate help with a transfer of businesses and land and natural resources. We've got a lot of aging farmers and ranchers out there. There's gonna be a huge turnover here in a very short time of ownership and help, we wanna help those landowners and those business owners find a way to sustain what they have. So they're doing a lot of work with those guys also with the food and ag products area and agriturism again. So this is just a picture of one of the groups that the growing Nebraska groups are working with right now. The last area is creating 21st century communities. We talked earlier, Connie talked about, we want healthy and vibrant environment for people with diverse backgrounds to wanna live, raise their families and come back and grow in Nebraska. We want an infrastructure that's available to support entrepreneurship and business development. That's what we're trying to do is build a base. I see a partnership with the libraries is this could be a huge area. That would be very beneficial. We'd love to have community members that are involved and engaged and help create a vision for the future. We can't do it without the communities. We can't do it without you. It has to be a group effort and it has to be driven from the grassroots up. What do you need? How can we help? What's our vision? We need to sit down and figure out what we wanna look like in the future and how are we gonna sustain what we have? We need leaders that are gonna generate ideas and projects and goals. The community vision and I tell you what folks, I'm in Stanton County. The tornadoes got us here a month ago. We have a lot of community leaders that are stepping up trying to figure out what the projects, what the goals, what's Pilger gonna look like a year from now or 10 years from now? These 21st century, how are we gonna get there and how are we gonna sustain ourselves? This is the heartbeat of any community to keep that going so I think it's very important and I hope you do too, so okay? Right now, like I said earlier, we may transfer from one group to the other but we're working on attracting and retaining young people into our communities and if we help engage them in leadership, give them opportunities for leadership in our communities, in our culture, that will only strengthen our community and help build their skills and techniques and strengthen from the bottom up. So that's a huge area, we have leadership programs across the state that go into communities and work not only with youth but young adults and business people all across the state. We've got a couple of programs, the Broadband Connectivity Program, Connie Hancock can talk more about that, that's not my area and then we do a lot of things with entrepreneurship and small business development which is huge and we're working very hard with workforce prep techniques. Right now I'm working with youth trying to teach them how to fill out resumes and how to interview, we do mock interviews, what kind of questions will they ask? What do you need to be prepared for when you step into the workforce? But that goes across all ages and all stages. So Connie, if you would talk a little bit about that Broadband. Sure, I'd be glad to. Joanne and Mary Jo and I have, and others, Charlotte and have been talking about Broadband planning and we're in the last stage of our grant but if our communities are going to be 21st century communities, we've got to help our constituents adapt, adopt and utilize the technologies that are available to us and with that comes, people can be, can live anywhere they want to live as long as they have access to the kinds of connections and understand the tools that are available to them to do some really phenomenal things. One of the last conferences that I went to, I toured a makerspace. It's an open source makerspace. They've got computer labs, they've got video room, they've got a million dollar robot. Granted, this is in Grand Rapids, Michigan but I'm thinking of our small communities, our rural communities and having some kind of a makerspace area where people can bring their ideas, they can play around with their ideas, they can code whatever programming they need to have and it does a lot of different things. It one, it helps educate a workforce, we're using the connections, we're using some leadership and helping provide that opportunity for folks and our young people get excited about taking their thoughts, their ideas and then actually making something of that. So there's all kinds of conversations around that. Anne Byers with the Nebraska Information Technology Commission, she's one of our partners in this endeavor. We're finishing up the statewide broadband plan and that will, that then will be distributed to the governor and others and our job then is to implement that plan. It's not gonna be a document that sits on a shelf. So there's all kinds of things that we can't do by ourselves because we don't have the resources but how can we do that in a way that we partner with each other, we partner with the local communities, we partner with you folks in your local libraries to do some really incredible stuff that we have not been able to do or would not have been able to do without the connections that our Community Vitality Initiative offers. Thanks Connie and I think if you will forward my slide one more time, these are the areas that the 21st century communities right now are targeting and working very hard to develop new and innovative programs and to partner across the state with entities that are also excited and want to look into these areas in leadership, ag literacy and advocacy, entrepreneurship and economic opportunities, education and vision. So hopefully I haven't confused you, hopefully I've just touched a few opportunities and maybe showed you some new things or maybe introduced you to something that you might be interested in and certainly please let us know if there's an area that you want to partner with or you want resources for or you want someone to come in and visit with and work with, that's what we do and we'd be very excited to be able to do that for you. So with that I'm gonna turn it over I think to Connie. Yes and this is where the fun part begins because we talk about the engagement piece and as I mentioned, this is a truly an initiative that is evolving. I mean Connie mentioned that right off the bat and as we think about the issues of the state of Nebraska as we think about the issues of our rural communities and the things that you guys live and communicate with and have conversations with every day with folks, your constituents in the library or at the coffee shop or at church, there's ways then to get involved and we've got varying levels of kind of engagement in this whole arena as well. So if you slip the next slide Connie, we've identified three different levels of engagement not only internal within our system but then as we think about our partners and how you guys might want to be involved. So we've got a core member, it's a core member is gonna be thinking about community vitality an awful lot. They're gonna have some expertise and knowledge and they're gonna be active for the long-term creation of what this potentially looks like down the road and it's gonna look different tomorrow than it does today just because conversations take place, ideas come forward and we wanna be as nimble as we possibly can because if we're not nimble to address those issues or to address the conversations that are taking place, we're missing the opportunity to really do some wonderful things. The engaged member then from an engagement perspective is being more involved at a greater level. It may be that you're helping create a program, it may be that you're helping create something that's a little bit bigger. So you're gonna be more involved in that kind of a conversation. There's no really job descriptions or position descriptions of any of this but it's just varying levels of degree of engagement and potentially time commitment. And then in terms of a program, it may be that the program has already created, it may be that the engaged member and the core members have already created this and you at the local level then have the opportunity then to just take that program and implement it into your existing program or your existing plan of work to address the needs. We will be creating some online presence around CVI, a community vitality initiative and you might be a guest blogger. So if you've got something that you really need to share with people, there might be that kind of an opportunity as well. If you slip onto the next slide Connie, these are the folks who are leaders of our community vitality initiative currently. So you can kind of put a name with a particular topic at this point in time. There's six of us currently that are coaches of the community vitality initiative and the next slide gives the names of those. Kim and I have been the leaders of, and Connie the leaders, the coaches of this effort and we would welcome any additional input, any additional thoughts that you might have if you want to be on our mailing list. Please let us know so that we can get you more involved, get you some additional information. We will be starting a CVI newsletter in the near future so that we can update people around what's happening. So say the library commission is doing some statewide programming or programming on a regional basis, whatever that might look like. We can actually put that into a newsletter format and share with the list of people that have signed up. I think the communication, we're trying to develop a communication system that is all inclusive and very informative about what's happening within those three topic areas. It may not be perfect as we move forward but we do believe that there's got to be a way that we communicate with what's going on. So the excitement building, we're excited. Connie and Kim and I have spent a lot of time thinking about how we're moving this forward, how we're engaging with people and we are extremely open to all ideas as to how to make that happen. If you would like to be part of our listserv, the next slide shows how to join that listserv. We do have monthly calls and so we're beginning to open those up to others that may wanna join. We do a lot of internal kind of conversation now of updating around these three topic areas. We're getting to a point where we also have guest speakers. So at some point in time, Joanne and Mary Jo, we might have the library commission come in and share what's happening from your perspective so that the CBI group can learn more and try to understand how we can partner that are not only with the commission but then at the local level with our local libraries as well because you guys are the anchor institution. You're one of the big players in our rural communities in terms of activity and experiences for people. The next slide, I think, gives Connie, Ryan Rosell, Kim and my email addresses and we would love to hear from you if you would like to be more engaged, if you would like to have a one-on-one conversation with us about community vitality initiative. It truly is an exciting time. I think it's an exciting time to live and work and play in Nebraska and I think the opportunities that we have before us will be able to address the issues, we'll be able to do some really big and bold things together. And I thank you for your time today. I hope that we have been able to share a little bit, maybe intrigued you a little bit about what community vitality is and the invitation is open for collaboration, engagement, and partnerships. Okay, thank you, Connie and Connie and Kim. I agree, this is definitely exciting work that you're doing and I hope that more of our libraries do get involved with it and hopefully this will help reach out to them. Before we do that, I would just wanna see Joe Ann or Mary Jo, if you're still there, did you wanna add anything from our perspective? Thanks, Krista, yes, we would. This is Mary Jo again and Joe Ann and I are excited about this project as well and we just wanted to let you know that we'd be happy to share with you some of our thoughts about some collaboration and partnering opportunities but also to gather from local libraries some of their ideas and find a way to share that with the people involved with the community vitality initiative. That's terrific. Awesome, we welcome that opportunity. Yeah, and I know Joe Ann's in meetings about this so I know we've gotten in there already so hopefully it'll keep developing, yeah. Okay, anybody have any final questions or comments? Nothing has come in except throughout while you guys were talking, I think everyone was just very interested in learning about it. But does anybody have any last minute questions they wanna ask or anything they wanna share about this topic about if you've been doing something in your community with Extension Office, whether it's related to this or other programs they do? I know Richelle already shared what they're doing in Columbus. Nothing urgent, doesn't look like anybody's putting anything in, that's fine. They had their contact info there was on the slides that this slideshow will be included in the recording afterwards so you'll be able to get the information from there. I've also been bookmarking some websites that I found as we were going through, as you guys are going through your presentation, the CVI website on the Lincoln Extension page Rural Futures Institute that you'd mentioned earlier and the main Extension page from UNL so people can find out some more about what you guys are doing. Excellent, thank you. We appreciate this time very much. Absolutely. Okay. All right, that will wrap it up for this week's show then. I'm going to pull back, present your control to my computer. There we go. There we go, yes. Okay, so that will wrap it up for this week's show on the UNL's Extensions Community Vitality Initiative. We are recording so it will be available later today. The PowerPoint will be available and I said all the links that I've been putting here into our library commission's delicious account will be available as well to you all collected together. So thank you very much for attending this week. I hope you join us next week when it is our monthly tech talk with Michael Sowers. Michael is the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission and once a month he comes on and chairs the tech news of the month since the last time he was on and brings on a guest speaker. This month he's got Cynthia Stugdill who's from Fremont Public Schools here in Nebraska to talk about using Twitter to brand your school. So if you're in a school or a school district this would be a show for you to watch to see how she's been using it and how you can use Twitter and other social media in your library. So sign up for that or any of our other episodes that we have coming up. Also Encompass Live is on Facebook so if you are a Facebook user go ahead and like us there. You'll get notifications of when show is starting. I posted here this morning. Join us right now on the fly if you want to when recordings are available. Announcements of new shows. So if you are on Facebook definitely go ahead and join us there. Other than that if nothing else doesn't look like any other urgent questions or comments have come in that will be it for this morning. Thank you very much and we will see you next week.