Community Connection Fair
Leadership McPherson 2022 Class Project
As the 2022 Leadership McPherson class began to work on our class project, we all started reflecting on the fact that many of us did not know about some of the programs and resources that were available to our community. We visited some of the agencies that provide these programs while on a class scavenger hunt during one of our class days. If we didn’t know about these programs, then there was a good chance that a lot of our families in the community didn’t know about them either.
We began collaborating with McPherson Middle School on how we could get these agencies in an interactive environment to actually talk to the students about services, programs and resources that were available to the McPherson Community. MMS and our Leadership McPherson class came up with the Community Connections Fair to be held in conjunction with the Reality U program that was already in place. We contacted several agencies and businesses and invited them spend the day with McPherson Middle School 8th grade class. We had 16 booths representing cross fit, Steps to End Poverty, The United Way of McPherson County, K-State Research and Extension, McPherson Animal Shelter, National Guard, McPherson Police Department and Fire Department to name a few. Each booth was given 3-5 minutes to have inter-active discussions or presentations for each group of students that rotated through. The 2022 Leadership McPherson class felt this was a successful day of participation of approximately 180 eighth grade students from MMS and we are hopeful that this Community Connections Fair continues into the future. –Article written by Tina Anderson
2022 Leadership McPherson Class: Tina Anderson (Home Communications, Inc.), James Augusta (People Bank & Trust), Amber Bowlby (McPherson Police Department), Karly Hess (Home State Bank), Shann Hess (McPherson Center for Health), Brett Hudson (Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance), Sonia Luttig (McPherson Animal Shelter), Nick McQueen (McPherson Community Building), Kim Romero (First Bank Kansas), Heather Schlicht (The Cedars), Logan Schrag (Peoples Financial).
Leadership McPherson is a professional development program of the McPherson Chamber of Commerce.
Enjoy this video of the Reality U and Community Connections Fair created by Jason Anderson and Dylan Blosser.