How Did the Initial Facilitation Process Happen?

In preparation for receiving the technical assistance grant, several community leaders and active participants were chosen to participate in a Local Foods, Local Places steering committee for Pelican Rapids. They first convened on October 7th and 8th, 2020 via an online workshop. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Local Foods, Local Places technical committee could not visit or tour Pelican Rapids. Fortunately, West Central Initiative commissioned a thorough video tour of Pelican Rapids, which the steering committee shared during the first day of the workshop (the video is viewable here). The second day of the workshop began with action prioritization, where each attendee voted on up to twelve actions they were either the most excited about or believed needed to happen first. This was followed by the top three to five actions being chosen to advance to the action planning stage. Details for each action were discussed and written, ultimately ending up with the four goals and their associated actions listed on the following pages.

Soon after the community action plan was published, steering committee members used a simple poll to identify the group ' s top priorities for the year, knowing that not everything could be pursued at once. The three actions they landed on included launching the incubator farm, launching the farmers market, and pursuing the community commercial kitchen.