(logo chimes) - [Amanda] Funding for Compass is provided in part by, the McKnight Foundation, the Otto Bremer Trust and members of Pioneer PBS.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Amanda Anderson.

Welcome to the April edition of Compass.

The regional public affairs show on Pioneer PBS.

If you haven't yet done so, please head over to our brand new YouTube channel and check us out.

Because this program only airs once per month, we release new stories online before they air on broadcast.

Be the first to know what Compass is covering by searching for Compass on Pioneer PBS on YouTube.

(soft upbeat music) Every year, the Sacred Heart Fire Department hosts an all you can eat smelt feed fundraiser.

According to the Minnesota DNR's website, smelt are native to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and entered the Great Lakes accidentally in 1912 when they escaped from an inland lake in Michigan where they had been stalked as forage fish.

The feed in Sacred Heart is a tradition for many in the area.

Pioneer PBS's Communications Director, Patrick Moore, attended to see the smelting sites.

(bright upbeat music) - I'm Gary Lentz.

I'm from Echo, Minnesota.

I've been going to smelt feed since I was a kid.

My dad used to be on a volunteer fire department and they'd go up and catch them on the Lake Superior.

They are some small fish that are deep fried and there really good.

It's a volunteer fire department.

So they put it on to raise funds for the fire department.

So it's a big community thing.

You can see by looking around here how many people are here.

It gives them a reason for people they get out and about.

People have good time.

The kids will go around and give you a smelt while you're in line.

They have kids come around here just to load your plate up.

The population has collapsed.

The smelt is not...it wasn't a native fish.

But they're in the great lakes.

They're all over.

I've eating them over in the St. Petersburg.

They got a bigger smelt over there.

It's got a delicacy.

So I like eating my smelt.

It's always a good time with good people.

See a lot of old friends.

Good time to see people who haven't seen for a while.

- Butch Halterman.

Montevideo, Minnesota.

In the seventies when I was going to college up in St.

Cloud, and actually earlier than that, a bunch of us would always go up smelting.

We called it our helter smelter.

And we would go up there and smelt and basically play poker until about 1:00, 2:00 in the morning and someone would yell, "They're running, they're running."

And then you'd go down there in hip waders because the water's really cold by the way, Gary.

And well, the first year I had a net that it was a cloth net, but I found out that that wore out on the rocks.

So the next year I actually had my smelting steel net.

A steel net that is made for it.

We had garbage cans full over.

And we'd sit with the scissors and cut off the head and then slice the belly and got it and throw it and freeze them, they froze, and we eat 'em until I got sick of 'em.

We'd wait until we get home.

We'd put them on ice.

Helter smelter.

They're tasty little things.

They can cause gastric distress.

The next day, if you're not careful.

Because they are really rich.

In fact, you should be eating yours.

- The next story comes from a partnership between Compass and Twin Cities PBS's public affairs program Almanac.

Kaomi Lee is Almanacs greater Minnesota reporter and she recently visited New London to meet Bethany Lacktorin at the town's little theater.

They talked about the creation of the space and about how small towns are using the arts to bolster economic activity and expand diversity, equity and inclusion via art in small and rural communities.

(band music) - [Kaomi] On a recent Saturday evening, people gathered in a century old theater to move their feet and enjoy the live music.

It happened in New London.

It's a rural community of less than 2000 people, hours away from a major city, but its theater is thriving.

- I grew up going to school here.

Started kindergarten in fact.

- [Kaomi] Bethany was adopted from Korea and spent her childhood in New London.

Eventually, life took her to bigger places.

- I always knew I'd be back.

My adopted family owned property that had been in the family for generation since 1868, I believe.

So.

I'm fourth generation to own that property and to to live there.

- [Kaomi] When the local high school to gave up using an old theater in town, Bethany saw an opportunity to get involved.

- They kept it in really good shape.

The passport, maintained the building.

They installed some kind of solar paneling in the back.

They installed LED lights.

- [Kaomi] Major repair work was done in the eighties.

It just needed some new energy, like a new logo with a lunar moth, a strobe light and removing the old theater seats.

- We are sitting in the New London little theater auditorium in the middle of the floor.

This is what I like to call the dance floor.

At one point, it used to be the basketball court.

The stage used to be an auction house for livestock, like way, way back.

So the building has history.

It's 101 years old this year.

- Historic theaters are disappearing across rural Minnesota.

But it's people like Bethany that's keeping the little theater here in New London alive.

- The theater little theater had always been a place for community theater and plays.

And that really wasn't my expertise.

I've done performance art, which is a slightly different form.

And been in many bands, ran a couple music venues while I was in the Czech Republic.

So when I looked at this space, I thought, "Gosh, you could do so many things with the stage like this, with a light system like this, but we need a bar to make it pay for itself."

- [Kaomi] The theater runs on volunteers like Bethany, who is the Program Director.

Volunteers even pitched in to break glass for this mosaic by artist Maria Novak.

Bethany says it was also important for her to be part of change in New London.

- With everything going on in the world in late 2019 and 2020, one thing growing up here I really felt was there wasn't space for people to actually express the lives they were experiencing.

- [Kaomi] Bethany has herself been turned away for plays because of non-inclusive casting.

- It became obvious to me that I can do something about that.

I can make a space for things like that to happen.

- [Kaomi] Bethany is working to diversify the programming at the little theater.

She's not afraid to get creative, like bringing in a burlesque act, having an open mic or hosting a haunted house.

- [Bethany] Rural places are under a lot of transition and change.

- [Kaomi] Nonprofits Springboard for the arts opened an outpost in Fergus Falls a decade ago.

It wanted to address the needs of rural artists.

It recently offered Bethany and others, a 10,000 unrestricted stipend to help support the work they're already doing.

The artists also receive mentoring and networking to overcome isolation.

- We have really just seen the critical role artists are playing in these rural spaces.

They're not just doing art for the sake of art.

They are hosting gatherings that push conversations forward that help identify solutions and experiment with new ideas.

And with the way that rural economies have changed, we need new ideas to help these communities stay intact.

- This is the green room.

- [Kaomi] Besides the theater, Bethany wears a lot of other hats.

She works at the local newspaper.

She also serves on the human rights commission, Arts Alliance and Food Co-op.

What do we got here?

- Lots of lunar moths.

- One might say Bethany and the theater are like moths in this community art project.

Where together, they can make something beautiful.

This theater is such a vital part of keeping this community alive.

- I think so.

I think we're doing a lot to try and raise the awareness of how arts helps community in general.

How it can be a way to solve a lot of problems and to bring people put together.

- The ResQ Zone based out of Marshall was designed to solve two challenges.

And both of those challenges involve e-waste.

Compass took a trip to the Lyon County Administrative Office, which houses the ResQ Zone to learn more about the program.

(upbeat music) The challenge is really two sides of the same computer disc.

On one side, there's been an identified need for affordable computers in Lyon county.

On the other side, Lyon County as a landfill county is trying to figure out how to lessen their e-waste footprint.

- We've been diverting like electronic waste from landfilling for many years.

- Roger Schroeder is the Environmental Administrator for Lyon County.

Electronic waste or e-waste includes things like VCRs DVDs, TVs, and computers.

Schroeder said that the county has been a collection point for e-waste since 2009, because in 2006, Minnesota law required that anything with the cathode ray tube, like televisions and computer monitors, be recycled.

Years ago, Schroeder was approached by an individual who wanted to start an e-waste recycling program.

- [Schroeder] We weren't in a position to do that.

- [Amanda] Obstacles like personal data and program costs were first on Schroeder's mind.

- And that's where the county board stepped in.

And Commissioner Sanow said, "You know what?

This is maybe not something that's going to make us money, but it's the right thing to do."

- I thought, "What if we fixed up the old computers and gave it to the people that had a need for their kids?"

The kids would have computers.

This guy would have work.

We'd get the stuff outta the landfill.

We wouldn't have to pay for it.

Get in processed somewhere else.

- The obstacles that I saw that prevented us from allowing computers to be recycled, the county board was supportive of trying to overcome those obstacles.

And all of a sudden, we were refurbishing computers and getting them back out into the community.

- [Amanda] And in 2018, ResQ Zone was up and running.

(upbeat music) ResQ Zone is a partnership between Lyon County and Advance Opportunities.

The county contracts with Advance also located in Marshall to provide the staff person who does the refurbishing.

Advance covers things like insurance, workman's comp, job coaching, whatever support the worker may need.

- Advance is a place for people with disabilities but I like to think of them as people with unique abilities.

And what we do on a daily basis is look for ways that we can find the right niche for a person to meet their skills and abilities and desires with the perfect job or the best job that they like.

Advance got started with the ResQ Zone as a support for the person who started the ResQ Zone, the brains behind the whole project.

- I'm Jason Redepenning.

I'm the computer guy here.

One of the people who are helping me, they ask me what I would want to do.

That one of those little dream things.

What would you want to do for the rest of your life for work?

And I told them I wanted to just fix computers and give them to people.

- [Amanda] Redepenning who has autism and ADHD is someone who thrives working amongst the servers and screens, and has always had innate drive to help people.

ResQ Zone is a safe place to do both of those things.

Redepenning works three days per week and gets paid through the county, which gets him money from reselling higher end computers and tablets.

Kylie Peterson works for Advance in his Redepenning's Direct Support Professional.

- So I just help out with whatever he needs while he is out here.

- [Amanda] Their refurbishing process goes something like this.

The product is donated, sometimes one item at a time and- - Sometimes companies will come in and they'll just give the whole pallet of them.

A big pile of them and then we'll have to go through them.

Like, Turkey Valley gave us some and we're going through them now.

Find the ones that have like too many turkey feathers in them, we throw those away.

The parts that are in them, if they're good or bad.

Kelly gets kind of grossed out with the turkey feather ones.

- Who wouldn't.

- [Amanda] Then Redepenning and Peterson take inventory and clean the products, turkey feathers and all.

- And then I start going through it and see all the parts are there.

And then we wipe it.

- [Amanda] Removing all personal data, then the computer gets imaged.

- The red and black computer back there, that's a server.

Server's basically a dedicated computer.

This dedicated computer does one job and one job only, and it holds these files called images on it.

Those images are not like pictures, like photos.

These are like full computers already done in one little file.

And what that computer does is when we hook up other computers to the network, we can spit out windows 10 or whatever to all those computers.

- A local computer tech service computers and beyond, they've been helping us with some of the higher end issues that we've come into.

They helped Jason create a server so that he can get multiple machines uploaded with the right software at one time.

- [Amanda] And then it goes on the shelf, ready for its new life of web surfing and computing.

Between 2014 and 2018, Lyon County dropped from 17,692 pounds of e-waste recycling to 2,132.

Schroeder said that awareness of rescue zone has increased the total volume of electronics they receive about half of which are old systems that ResQ Zone can't use.

In the past three years, ResQ Zone has gotten 420 computer systems back out into public use.

And half of those were given out in the past year as Lyon County identified more need and area schools, especially with COVID 19.

- We set up the structure so that it's needs based.

Working through initially United Community Action and Southwest Center for Independent Living and some of those other service organizations.

And then when the pandemic hit, we thought, well, we need to expand this to schools if they have a need.

We don't wanna know people's financial information, and so what we set it up as if you have a child that gets free and reduced lunches, if you're a veteran, if you're someone who receives services from one of these other organizations that is income based, then we just need approval that you're receiving those services and that qualifies you.

So that way, we're not asking for detailed personal information on anybody because that's already being done by another organization.

- [Amanda] While this project took some extra human bandwidth.

Roger Schroeder thinks that now that they've worked through the bugs, this could be a plug and play operation.

- [Schroeder] As long as you can find the right staff person that's able to refurbish a machine, it can work.

Our space, our footprint is very small.

We're already collecting the machines.

So I think it would be easy to replicate throughout the state.

(soft music) - At the beginning of COVID 19, Joan Cushman was hired to be the resident care attendant at Brookside Senior Living in Montevideo.

A visit to Brookside to see Cushman Network sparked a greater conversation about multi-generational workforces.

Funding for stories like these about aging with dignity comes from the Minnesota river area agency on aging.

- Hello, Ruby.

She's usually sewing over here.

Hi Ruby.

- [Ruby] Hi.

- We're here.

- Hello there.

How are you?

- [Amanda] Joan Cushman is the resident care attendant at Brookside Senior Living in Montevideo.

Karl Huntley, Cushman's granddaughter is the Assisted Living Director at the facility.

- It's been a long two years with dealing with COVID on the resident aspect as well as a staffing standpoint.

So we had to be creative on how we handled situations.

Joan's position started when earlier on in COVID when we had to restrict visitors and we had to restrict family members coming into the building.

- [Amanda] Brookside was recommending that residents didn't leave the building.

No one out, but also no one in, like most other Assisted Living Facilities.

Cushman's job was to connect the resources that people would bring to their family members living at Brookside.

- [Karl] She was delivering items that family members would drop off in our front entrance.

She'd bring them up to their apartments, help them put things away, help sort through mail.

She was just doing kind of some of the things that without family members in the building, that we weren't...the residents were having a tough time keeping up on.

So she just there.

Kind of a fill-in family member to start out.

- [Amanda] Huntley said that Brookside's parent company Cassia based in Edina, Minnesota, encouraged hiring a resident care attendant.

Cushman formally lived in Brookside with her husband, but moved out to live independently when her husband died in 2019.

- And I got to thinking, you know, I bet there's a couple hundred more people in town that are lonesome and I think we should do something about it.

- [Amanda] So Cushman walks the three floors of Brookside trying to visit as many of the 47 independent or Assisted Living apartments that she can.

- And there's her place.

We usually deliver a lot of stuff and I go that end and that one.

- [Amanda] She brings mail.

- Office mail.

- Oh, you betcha.

(laughing) That's another bill.

- [Amanda] Each day, Cushman comes equipped with her bright yellow notebook.

- So you can see some writing instead of black pages.

- [Amanda] Filled with stories to share, poems to recite, things to personalize each visit.

- How did your dinner go before your birthday?

- [Amanda] And she takes the time to be present providing a kind ear.

- Your birthday with your friend.

- Oh yeah.

Just Jim and I went out because... - And they'll tell me what they're doing.

And they'll show me what they're doing.

- See, I take two different kinds.

- They like to talk about their crafts and what their kids have been doing.

- Well, my daughter has a CPA.

- [Amanda] Or anything that happens to pop into their minds.

- It's funny.

People like lefse but they don't care for lutefisk.

- Right, that's me.

I don't like lutefisk.

- [Amanda] Actually Cushman is known through the halls for her homemade lefse.

Of course, she's known for more than that at Brookside.

- My role is making people happier and letting them know that we care about them.

You know, the nursing staff can't sit and visit with them and they feel all alone.

But they love to share their stories because they don't have anybody to visit with.

And then we have a lot of things in common because I'm more their age than a younger person.

- [Amanda] Huntley said that the average age of their residents is about 87.

- And so, just having that connection.

You know, most of our caregivers are probably 20, 30, 40 years old, but Joan being 80 and able to connect on things that our generation might not know about, it's just kind of a unique situation being able to connect on a generational level.

- [Amanda] Minnesota's workforce is aging and the key to successful workplaces might be intergenerational.

Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development found that in 1995, about one in 10 workers in the state were 55 and older.

In 2020, one in four workers were 55 and older.

And last year, the oldest millennials started turning 40, which means they're now covered under the age discrimination and employment act.

Said Susan Weinstock, Vice President of Financial Resilience Programming at AARP - So right now there are five generations in the workforce.

This has never happened before.

So there's the traditionalists.

Those are people born 1925 to 1945.

There's the baby boomers who are 1946 to 1964.

The generation X, 65 to 1980.

Millennials, 1981 to 2000 and then generation Z 2001 to 2020.

Research has shown that workplaces that have a multi-generational teams and multi-generational workforce have a more productive workforce.

It increases efficiency.

It also lowers turnover.

There's also the ability to do knowledge transfer.

Because when those folks walk out the door, sometimes that institutional knowledge, unless, you know, employer makes sure that there is that multi-generational workforce, that institutional knowledge also walks out the door.

- [Amanda] There are challenges to intergenerational workforces.

In 2020, AARP surveyed 1,322 Americans aged 40 to 65 and found that 78% of respondents had seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace.

And stereotypes like younger adults aren't stable or older adults don't know technology or won't learn new skills, don't allude these spaces.

But Weinstock says that research suggests otherwise.

- Our research shows that they do wanna learn new skills, that they are interested in learning new things, and that they like mentorship and they like cross mentorship.

Where you compare a younger and an older worker together and the knowledge transfer goes both ways.

Which is a fantastic way to build a really good dynamic workforce.

- [Amanda] Intergenerational workforces allow people to see each other as people and not as stereotypes.

Which can build intercommunity connections.

Ages and asset, because of Cushman's experience, she's able to read the nuances of the larger experience of aging and living at a facility like Brookside.

- But when a new resident comes in, I usually try and visit them more often to make them comfortable.

And if they've lost a loved one, I make that more often visit.

- Adjusting here is difficult for a lot of people.

My husband had an awfully hard time adjusting to leaving the home.

And it does help to have somebody come around and talk.

And especially if a person's alone.

I was, of course my husband was here for a while, but if you're alone and you don't know anybody here, people, not all are so willing to put themselves out to meet new people.

- And then we have people coming in and visit us too.

So if we don't have other visitors, we can always rely on you.

- Right.

So every time I come by, she says, "Come anytime."

- Well.

Yeah.

Well, see, we knew each other a little bit before.

Not too long, but before.

When she made lefse for my husband.

That's one thing he loved.

- [Amanda] I told you about that famous lefse.

- Like I said, I belong to the elderly and everybody here seems like my family.

It's so satisfying if you can get someone out of their depression or just smile.

And you know, if you can make someone smile, it makes your day.

- [Amanda] Born out of challenges related to COVID 19 safety protocols, mixed with the general health care staffing shortage, Joan Cushman's position is a creative way for Brookside to fill a healthcare and caregiving need.

She's transferring generational knowledge while creating a space for meaningful connections that benefit Brookside residents, staff, and Joan herself.

(upbeat music ends) Thank you for watching the April edition of Compass.

We encourage audience interaction and feedback.

So head over to our social pages and website and interact with us.

And a heads up, the May edition of Compass will air May 12th on Pioneer PBS.

See you then.

Funding for compass is provided in part by, the McKNight Foundation, the Otto Bremer Trust and members of Pioneer PBS.

Thank you.

(soft upbeat music)