Welcome back to another episode of Less People. I’m Jenny Russell. Last time we talked a little bit about power-ups, and I talked about them being people who are ruled by choice, and that’s an actual program from the Kansas Sampler Foundation.
So power-ups are people who are 21 to 39 years old who are ruled by choice and live in Kansas usually, but we would probably support other people that are ruled by choice as well. Sometimes when you are a ruled by choice person, which means you did not get stuck somewhere, you purposely move to a rural area, and that is somewhere that you want to build your life, that is somewhere you want to build a job, that is somewhere you want to to be. Then you are a power-up, but sometimes being a power-up gets a little bit lonely if you are the only person of your age that is in your town, or if you just don’t have a lot of support around you.
Sometimes the power-up report that was done a couple of years ago for the Office of Rural Prosperity with Marcy Penner and the Kansas Sampler Foundation, that was one of the drawbacks that a lot of people saw was that their parents or their grandparents were questioning why they decided to move back or move to a rural area, and how hard that was to have to defend that choice.
But now, you know, we talked in the 1980s, the agricultural economy was pretty tough, and a lot of people moved away because there wasn’t jobs, and now with the, I’m going to call it the internet economy, those things are not necessarily as as big of an obstacle, and you can do a lot of really high tech and really important work from a rural area. Young people who choose to live in rural communities feel like they’re seen and their voices are heard, and the power-up movement in Kansas really tries to help that out.
They actually have a rural power-up, power-up coordinator now, her name is Simone Elder, and she is looking for people like that, people who are rural by choice that maybe do not have the support. If you know somebody like that, maybe in your rural community, that really could use that extra shot in the arm of you’re doing the right things, we’re going to help you figure out this obstacle, those type of things, Simone wants to talk to you. So it’s simoneelder, s-i-m-o-n-e dot elder at kansassampler.org. She would love to talk to you or to another power-up of the ages 21 to 39 who are rural by choice that live in Kansas.
So give her an email, tell her that the podcast, this podcast sent you, and she would love to speak more about what she does and how she can help others. One funny thing as I go here too, I’m going to look up the power-up and go report because I’ve spoken about that a little bit, but I was trying to find Simone’s contact information on the internet, and I actually typed it in as Simon, not Simone, and it came up with like a TV star from Big Sexy Money named Simon Elder. I was like, wow, I didn’t know that Simone had such a popular name.
But now that I found this report, the Office of Rural Prosperity, as I mentioned, enlisted the Kansas Sampler Foundation to listen and learn to Kansans age 21 to 39 to find ways to help recruit and retain young people. They surveyed over more than over 500 people from every single county, and Marcy Penner, if you’ve not met her, she’s amazing, and she is one of our role models here at GenRust Freelance. We just thank a lot of her and the things that she has done for rural Kansas across the state.
But she was able to talk to, specifically interview, over the phone 175 rural Kansans, and she made a report for the Office of Rural Prosperity, some action items of things that Kansas can do to be more inviting and welcoming to people. So it’s interesting some of the results, and we might go into some of these results over the coming weeks in terms of what they found. You know, they asked things like, what makes your town better? What would make your town better? And they were laughing.
One of the examples was, I just want lettuce. I want the ability to buy lettuce. And I get that.
Sometimes in our, we kind of get into some food deserts and things, and you know, some of the culture has been around aversion to vegetables. I remember when I first met my husband, he pretty much ate potatoes and steak. That was what he ate.
Since then, I’m really proud of him. He has branched out. He does eat Thai food and some various green things every once in a while, but still, no, not a lot of vegetables in that diet.
So it was just interesting to reach out to these people, to a lot of younger people that are moving back to rural areas because there are more and more of them every single day, to hear what they have to say. And if you have a rural community, a small town, reach out to some of those people, maybe that are new, maybe that are back, that are younger, and see what that would be. Maybe they’re going to tell you it’s lettuce.
I just want lettuce. Or maybe it’s things a little bit harder to solve, like child care and housing. All of those things we know are issues in rural Kansas and throughout rural areas across the nation.
So, as I said, just wanted to give you a little bit of an overview of the Power Up movement, the Rural by Choice Power Up, and the whole access to Simone Elder there at the Kansas Sampler Foundation. So if you know somebody who is 21 to 39 who is rural by choice that maybe needs a little bit of extra support, please reach out to Simone. Don’t spell in Simon because Simon will give you a totally different person.
But check that out and I’ll give you a little more information on the Power Up and Go report on different and further episodes of Less People.