You can trust the good news you find in the Brag Basket. Photo CC by Elvert Barnes on Flickr
The Brag Basket is open! This one is for April 1-3, 2016. Bring your good news, big or small, to share with everyone.
What can you share in the Brag Basket?
- introduce yourself
- share some great news from this week
- celebrate progress, even baby steps
- congratulate a friend
- applaud for each other
- confess your undying love for rural places
How do you join in?
- Below this post is the comment section. Add your good news there.
- Reading this in your email? Hit reply.
Don’t like to brag? Just share some good news for someone you’re happy for. It’s a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.
- About the Author
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The rural small business blog. We talk about small town business, with how-to articles, especially on social media marketing and making your community a better place. We use this “author” for announcements and other things you’ll want to know.
What a week! I was invited to be a State Delegate-at the 11th hour! But non-the-less, someone thought well enough of my no nonsense manner to ask. (No- I didn’t say yes at this time) And my good friend Jo ‘the coffee queen’ is being awarded the Business Woman of the Year tonight! Yeah- I am glad to be there with here. She is also an amazing mentor. And I am taking the first baby steps towards becoming a voice for small business and rural communities in ND.
Whew! Now back to calving. ;)
All kinds of good news, Katy! Thanks for sharing, and cheers to Jo The Coffee Queen and Business Woman of the Year!
Our shop raised $3,150.00 worth of food gift cards for a veteran in town that did two tours in Iraq and returned home to be diagnosed with cancer. Family of six were in tears when they received our Easter basket. The community really got behind us in our Some Bunny Cares event.
Well done!
Wow! You’ve really made a difference for a family, Paul and Brenda!
Wow! That’s amazing and very touching! Your thoughtfulness and the difference you are making in their lives brings tears to my eyes.
Hello from New Zealand. I grew up in a ridiculously pretty place called the Marlborough Sounds, which was so isolated that my brothers and I were educated by post and if the road closed, you got the row boat out. Grandma was a local doctor and Mum ran a rural support network, so guess it’s no surprise that I now work for a rural policy and advocacy organisation.
Now live in Taranaki, a district that has more dairy herds than any other in the country. One of its claims to fame is that they invented the electric milking machine here – better than handmilking any day.
What a great story, Lisa! I’m picturing the row boat now. :) Cheers to a family of strong women!
I love hearing about small towns outside of the United States. It’s amazing how easily I think Middle America is the only place with small towns, when truthfully they are everywhere.
This is our 70th Annual Snake Hunt Weekend, our biggest tourism event of the year. Today I’ve been busy posting on Instagram and Facebook, hoping to generate a lot of interest.
Yay, Jeanne! Cheers to you and the whole crew down there for 70 years of celebration and fun!
Where are you located? Not that I will be attending…I try to avoid them. Just curious!
Waynoka Oklahoma. And the snakes are well contained. It is more the spring carnival atmosphere that we try to promote.
Just returned from a “hymn fest” at our country church. 50 high school and junior high youth from Seward, NE kicked off a 4 “city” tour in rural Bremen, KS. Next stop Wichita, then Dallas, and Ponca City. Coupled with 50 elementary and junior high youth from our parochial school, and a congregation equaling the size of Bremen population itself, the event was simply amazing! Imagine if any of the next three stops matched the population of the host community … proud to be rural! Tomorrow night “dad and daughter dance, where dads and daughters through age 12 share a night of dinner and dancing. Saturday, a home grown fundraiser for the arts programs in our community. Can’t say “nothing to do here!”
Bruce, love it! Those are some great rural activities, right there!
Great work! It’s so important to get our youth involved. Your efforts have great value!
I work in the small community of Sheffield, Iowa (pop. 1100) and I’m constantly amazed at the number of volunteers that come forward for community events!
Howdy, Katy! That is a great thing for your town!
A small group of local artisans and patrons founded a non-profit corporation in the new year and opened an art center in Hot Springs, SD our small, rural town of 3,500. Our center, Chautauqua Artisan Market, just completed it’s first month as a market place, classroom and gallery. We have turned an empty downtown sandstone building into a beautiful venue for local artisans to share, sell, and teach. The new center receives praise and thanks from locals daily as they stop in to check on the “new kid in town”.
Terry, I love how you all have used a formerly empty building to serve multiple purposes! Here’s to a long, prosperous run!
Hello Terry! It is great to hear about this success in Hot Springs, SD! I am from Wall, SD and we are just getting our economic development organization off the ground. We can learn from you! Hot Springs is doing wonderful things!
Love seeing connections!
That’s a great idea. We have some folks in our small OK town opening a flea market and consignment store in a previously empty building this weekend.
Jeanne, this is great news!
I am delighted to announce the opening of the St. Francis Motorcycle Museum on Saturday, April 2, 2016, at 10:00 a.m. CT. This was a community effort in far Northwest Kansas that is happening because the community believed in a project and through donations and hard work made it happen. The museum, a 501 (c) (3) organization, will be manned by volunteers 7 days a week from 10-5, except holidays.
Congratulations to you for taking on a project like that and making it a success!!! Best of luck to you for opening day tomorrow!
Helen, congratulations to you all! Specialty museums make me happy, and motorcycles are a great specialty.
Good morning all! I am from Pascagoula, Mississippi. I love my job of being the Main Street Director just because I get to meet such wonderful people from everywhere. The most rewarding is telling them about a community I Love so much!! We are Pascagoula and Blessed! Come see us. :) Have a great day!
PS – I love ready Small Biz Survival :) Keep up the great work… It gives us hope
Always Be Amazing!!
Rebecca
Rebecca your community is so blessed to have someone with so much passion about what they do! Keep the passion!
Howdy, Rebecca! I especially love the story of Pascagoula’s Anchor Square – from an empty lot to a tiny business incubator!
Good morning to all! I run the Chamber in Ballinger, TX population 4000, I also do Community Development for the City of Ballinger. We are gearing up for our 41st Texas State Festival of Ethnic Cultures Arts & Crafts weekend slated for the April 23rd & 24th. This is a great community event that brings all of our non-profits in to set up different ethnic food booths to raise money for their organizations, we also have live entertainment, lots of vendors showing off their wares. I love this event because it gives all of the non-profit organizations a chance to raise funds for their cause.
Best of luck to you at your 41st Annual Event! I am a Chamber Director as well and understand the intense craziness involved in planning an event like this. Cheers to you for making it an opportunity for your non-profits and their causes!
Tammie, I love it! This sounds like the food festival I most want to be at! The arts are a bonus!
Wednesday night was our second graduation for our Bootcamp Entrepreneurial Development Class. Two new business plans were presented in hopes of winning a $5000 grant for rent and utilities. Plans for one microbrewery and pub and one special events/carryout pop up restaurant are underway!!! Our attempt to grow from within to fill our vacant properties!!
Kerry, such a smart way to bring entrepreneurs together with training and resources, as well as show everyone that there is life and activity! Win!
Good Morning! I am on the Economic Board, Chamber and a new non-profit “Imagine Merkel” which is addressing our housing, trying to find new ways to get our town alive again! We recently were lucky enough to have the Resource Care Medical/Dental Clinis build a location in our downtown area!! We are so excited to be able to offer first class medical and dental to anyone and the facility is amazing!! They renovated an old grocery store that had been closed for years!!
Way to go! Having good medical care is an important part of getting your town alive again.
Kay, that is such a smart thing to put downtown! Often the medical facilities are pushed out to the edge of town, but this keeps more traffic and activity in the core.
Good morning! I am the Chamber Director in our small town of 2,000, as well as involved in various other ways throughout the community (as I’m sure many of you are). We continue to stretch what we can do and how we can help our members. I am excited that we had a successful “After Hours” event yesterday with one of our new members. This new member is an Ag-based business, and we are an Ag-based community. With that said, in the past, The Chamber has not had a lot of support or involvement from our Ag community. We are hopeful that this event was a great first step in changing that!
Hope, that is a smart move, connecting the business and ag worlds. Here’s to many more steps that direction!
Hello from Melbourne, Iowa! We are a small community of 830 people, and not a lot of businesses locally. However, our Beautification Committee, with the help of a local fabricator-extraordinaire hung 14 beautiful brackets with flower baskets last year. We also were able to purchase some large flower pots and a couple benches to spruce up our block long Main Street. We had tons of positive feedback from our community as well as visitors to our town. We have a terrific library with an amazing new library director trying new things and our town swimming pool will be filled with laughing children come the end of May. We have a lot to be thankful for here, and sometimes we just don’t know it!
Howdy, Mary! Love the picture you’ve painted of people making small but real differences in the downtown. Cheers!
I’m a volunteer for many of the organizations in our town. Last summer we were awarded an Arts and Entertainment District from the State of Maryland and have had good success in identifying businesses we want in our community, recruiting them and moving them in. Despite the business growth, the population has not grown much. However, in the past week, we’ve seen two of our vacant homes purchased and ground has been broken on two of our vacant lots. Grantsville, MD is a town of approximately 750 residents.
Emily, that is huge visible progress for your growth, especially in a town of 750!
Greetings from Webster, South Dakota! This week, we hosted a community event for area residents working to create the future they want for Webster. We asked a high school senior to invite these community members to participate in a 90-day challenge. Several goals have been set including hosting a pop-up walk/bike path; launching the Senior Project and Pre-Engineering courses; helping elderly with lawn care; adding planters to Downtown Webster; painting a house and more! These resident-led teams have been very successful in the past year and a half, so I can’t wait to see these plans in action this year. I am so proud of these folks!
Good to hear. Way to have the youth involved with your community. We are an outlying neighbor to the north and west of you, Ashley, ND.
The youth are a vital part of our rural communities well being. Keep ‘er up!
Hey Denny! I was just near Ashley yesterday in Pollock and Herreid for our “First Impressions Tour” through Grow South Dakota. I hope all is going well for you!
Melissa, so many great ideas and actions! Love it!
Also, I’ve heard you have said good things about Deb and I. Thank you!
Absolutely!
I’d like to learn more about the details of your work to involve HS Students in your community development efforts…who is leading the efforts, a local Chamber/EDC? Is detail on the 90-day Challenge on a website anywhere? Thanks for sharing!
Hey Ann!
I forgot to mention the “we”! I am the executive director for the local economic development organization. We have a lot of partners in this community engagement process, including 11 local sponsors (Chamber, utilities, banks, healthcare, etc.). That’s what got our Workforce & Education Vision Team going in the first place. The team is comprised of myself, the assistant principal, a couple EDC board members, and a couple business leaders. The assistant principal is key to anything we do!
In November, we hosted a Youth Summit, because we realized we didn’t have any youth voices involved. Forty students in grades 7-12 gathered together to talk about their ideas for the community’s future. From there, we recognized several young people were energized about this project too. That’s how I got in contact with one high school senior about introducing the 90-day challenge.
We don’t have much up online yet, but here’s where we post updates: http://websterareadev.blogspot.com/p/designsd-workshop.html and https://www.facebook.com/WebsterAreaDevelopment/.
I hope this helps!
Greetings to you all. Our “made me proud moment” was when a group of citizens met for a “Marketing your Community session”. At moments it made me realize that our community is still moving forward; gave a sense of proudness. Listening to the fine group of citizens over a couple different nights also helps one realize your not alone; that others are concerned with the different aspects of the community. This community is full of german/Russians; a strong group of folks who don’t like to toot their own horns. It’s alright to toot; just to keep each another’s spirits up and to keep our rural way of life vital.
Denny, this is wonderful! I love hearing that like-minded locals are finding each other!
I just came accross this story on our ABC news that is worth sharing about a shearer who established a business in the small town of Naracoorte South Australia:http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-02/how-a-shearer-grew-an-empire-in-his-tiny-town/7288076?WT.mc_id=newsmail
I understand that the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) TV Landline program will be doing the story on Sunday 3 April 2016. Most ABC TV programs are offered online via their iview service here: http://iview.abc.net.au/home
Regards
Hank
Hank, that is an inspiring story. Thank you so much for sharing it!