Introduction
This report provides a summary of the Managing Information with Rural America (MIRA) cluster follow-up evaluations based on re-visits to the six regional clusters two years after receiving their MIRA grants. It is based on mail surveys, phone interviews, email interviews, fax interviews and site visit interviews conducted by the Heartland Center for Leadership Development from March to May 2002.
Round 2 of Managing Information with Rural America was implemented in six regional clusters in the following states: Colorado, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
MIRA sought to find, use and enhance the rural community's ability to utilize electronic communications and information systems as a tool to meet current and future community challenges.
Of the 51 original teams, 17 are still meeting. With 36 of the 51 teams completing their original projects, these still active MIRA teams are either working with ongoing projects or projects that devolved into new activities. Forty-one of the teams developed new partnerships that helped them to either complete the project or develop it into an ongoing project.
The number of projects that evolved into new activities (23/51) seemed closely linked to the number of teams that were able to leverage new funds (25/51).
MIRA's goal was to have community teams working on community technology projects, however, five teams chose projects that were not directly related to technology.
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Lessons Learned
After all the emails, faxes, phone calls and personal interviews, there are some common themes that become apparent while summarizing these six regional MIRA clusters.
- A collaborative and responsive leadership style seemed to work best for most teams. The majority of the teams completed their projects by using delegation, group consensus and active community involvement. Most of the teams that failed to complete their projects had either "top-down" leadership styles where one person took over the project without delegating duties to other team members, or were teams led by one to two people with no outside collaboration or community partnerships.
- Local politics hindered some of the projects. Once again, the affected teams were the ones where there was little to no teamwork. A collective opinion is harder to ignore than the opinion of one person. For example, if the Ohio Federal Hocking Cluster had a group of community members who said how they wanted the computers to be used, perhaps the opinions of the one Federal Hocking Cluster team member would not have been ignored by the school district.
- Those groups with active youth involvement fared better when there was a succession plan in place. Some teams failed because the young people from the original group graduated or lost interest and the team was at a loss as to how to recruit new team members or spark interest among the local teens.
- Some teams came up with wonderful ideas, yet they were not totally realistic or feasible. For example, Colorado's North Conejos team wanted to provide wireless telecommunications/telephone/Internet capacity to northern Conejos County. While they were able to collaborate with the local ISP provider and did install several wireless Internet accounts, it was not realistic to assume that without support from a large communication company they would be able to provide and sustain this service to the county.
- Having a specific goal such as restoring a courthouse versus a broad goal like environmental sustainability appears to have helped in completing projects.
- One of MIRA's objectives was to launch new projects, however some groups used MIRA funds to start or finish pre-existing projects. Most of those groups already had a plan of action, set goals and a set of people working on the idea. Therefore, the majority of these groups succeeded in fulfilling their goals.
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Best of the Best
The following MIRA teams were the "best of the best" in using community resources to bring technology to their rural areas. These groups applied the skills they learned at the six MIRA workshops and set the guidelines for other communities to follow to success.
Crooksville, Ohio
- Targeted existing institutions
- Youth involvement with a succession plan
- Community involvement with the Arts Council, public TV, computer center survey
- Projects affected all city residents and not just those interested in computers
Miller (SPICE), Ohio
- Involved entire community with asset survey
- Set long-range goals
- Extensive use of community partners
- Overcame disagreement
- Helped the entire community by creating a business incubation center
Youth Press, Wisconsin
- Involved more than 250 students from 13 schools
- Extensive collaborations involved community
- Leveraged funds to keep the project ongoing
- Adaptable team leadership approach with individual accountability
Youth Business, Wisconsin
- Collective leadership style
- Youth involvement with succession plan
- Taught useful skills to youth such as woodworking, marketing and web design
Dreamtree, New Mexico
- Established youth crisis service where none existed
- Extensive community involvement
- Leveraged funds to keep the project ongoing
Taos Red Willow, New Mexico
- Affected Taos Pueblo, and several other pueblos as well
- The transmitting tower to be built in Phase II of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant will connect the Taos Pueblo with other pueblos, as well as the world
- Collective leadership style allowed team members to be open to new ideas
- Building with Books International offered to build a new pueblo school
- Digitized Native language curriculum keeps Native traditions alive and community resources known to all tribe members
Arts and Culture Team, Pennsylvania
- Unique idea
- Celebrated how community resources have nurtured wonderfully accomplished young people
- Partnerships with local businesses involved local community members
- Kept costs at a minimum
- Delegation style of leadership gave team members personal accountability
Duck Hill, Mississippi
- Involved entire community by involving youth in leadership, education communication and technology
- Cross-generational project connected the young and old
- Inspired other local community organizations, as well as communities throughout the state
- Partnerships kept costs to a minimum and opened up new opportunities that enhanced the program
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Methodology
MIRA Round 2 site visits began with a basic survey looking for general information on the project. Starting with a matrix for each cluster listing the project names, original grant proposals, local contacts, web sites (if available), and email addresses, a site visit was then scheduled.
Ohio was the first site visit in early March, 2002. Colorado, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Mississippi were visited between the end of March and end of May. Through mail surveys, phone interviews, email interviews, fax interviews and site visit interviews, MIRA project progress was ascertained.
Four teams were not evaluated because representatives failed to respond to our inquiries or could not be located.
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