Northwest Blog

NMF Board and Staff downtown Mahnomen On August 18, 2017, the NMF Board Members and Staff traveled to  Mahnomen  for the quarterly board meeting and community visit. In-person board meetings are held in the cities that the board members call home on a rotating basis, and each county in the northwest region is represented. This time Pete Haddeland, current Board Chair, hosted the board meeting in his hometown of Mahnomen at the  White Earth Tribal and Community College  (WETCC). Board and Staff members arrived at WETCC at 8:30 AM for coffee and breakfast, and then boarded two vans for a tour of Mahnomen led by Michael Neusser, White Earth Economic Development Director and Mitchell Berg, Mahnomen City Administrator. As the vans weaved through the streets of Mahnomen, NMF Board and Staff members had the opportunity to see first-hand all of the projects and initiatives that have been funded by the Foundation. Since 2013, for every $1 the city received from NMF, the city was able t

(Left to right) Caige Jambor, Sharleen Zeman-Sperle, and Stacy Bender-Fayette, SEL Specialists at Peacemaker Resources, work together to plan the upcoming school year. The mission of  Peacemaker Resources  is to "foster communication, compassion and connection leading to respectful relationships and healthier individuals and communities" and they achieve this by bringing their  social emotional learning  curriculum to elementary and middle schools around the state. They were also a recipient of the  NMF Quality of Place award in 2016 .  What makes their curriculum distinctive?   Barb   Houg, Executive Director, says,  " Its preventative approach, its relevance for children of all ages, and its lifelong impact." The curriculum that Peacemaker Resources is bringing into schools includes a number of programs -  STAR (Students Teaching Attitudes of Respect) ,  Girls Lead ,  Cultural Responsiveness ,  SEL (Social Emotional Learning) ,  Mindfulness , and  Tr