A few of Perry’s experts on community development hosted a touring group of Kazakhstanis last week and shared their local knowledge of Iowa development. The eight-member delegation from Kazakhstan visited Perry as part of a week-long tour of Nebraska and Iowa.
“Most of what they’d been seeing on their tour was agricultural extension,” said Jon Wolseth, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach field specialist in Latino community and economic development. “So we were charged with talking about community development.”
Wolseth said most of the delegates were people from the Kazakhstan government who are working to develop a university extension system in their country. The group also included two translators and two trainers.
“I guess Kazakhstan has an extension system that’s about 3 years old,” Wolseth said. “The delegation was here as part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to give Kazakhstani extension professionals support and models of what cooperative extension can do. All the members were from agricultural regions within Kazakhstan.”
Wolseth was assisted in his two-and-a-half-hour exchange with the visitors by Perry City Administrator Butch Niebuhr and Perry-Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Bob Wilson.
“It always amazes me how different we are from other countries and yet how similar are our circumstances,” Niebuhr said.
Wolseth is part of the ISU Extension’s Community and Economic Development Program. According to its mission statement, the “Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Community and Economic Development (CED) program empowers communities to shape their own futures through research, education, community engagement, economic development, community planning and design.”
Wolseth led off for the Perry team, giving the Central Asian visitors a brief overview of work the CED does throughout the state and emphasizing its partnerships with state and local government and community groups.
All three Perry leaders then described the work they do in Perry and demonstrated how partnerships between the city of Perry, the Perry-Area Chamber and Hispanics United for Perry work on ground. They also gave a brief history of Perry, emphasizing the last 20 years, and wrapped up with highlights of several local projects, including the partnering over the Raccoon River Valley Trail seen in the Common Thread group of regional stakeholders.
