- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(singers vocalizing) - [Nicole] Coming to you from Rochester, Minnesota (singers vocalizing) RTown.

(singers vocalizing) - The Village Agricultural Cooperative and Learning Community aims to create opportunities for communities in our city to grow culturally relevant food.

Here to tell us more about this initiative is Amanda and Megan Crawley, Director of The Village.

Welcome to RTown, Amanda.

- Thank you, Nicole.

Happy to be here.

- So, something that struck me about the aim of The Village was this idea of culturally relevant food.

Can you talk to us a little bit about what that means?

- Sure.

Yeah, we have a large percentage of populations in Rochester who, you know, they come from other countries.

We have a large Cambodian population, estimated between, to be between five, 8,000 people.

We have a large amount of people from Kenya.

And these people are looking to preserve their indigenous, you know, their cultural heritage by cooking those recipes that they have brought from their countries and sharing them with their children.

And they can't do that without the specific ingredients that those recipes require.

Some of our local food stores do carry those ingredients, but they're typically coming from quite far away.

They're expensive and just not very fresh.

So our goal is to provide opportunity for people to have the land to grow those foods that then they can share with their immediate communities, and with the rest of us in Rochester.

- Fantastic.

So where's The Village located, and how much land do you currently have that's being used?

- So we actually have six different sites.

Last year, we took over the management of the Channel One gardens, which had been in operation since 1987.

So we took over two of their sites.

And then we also have a site at, with the Alternative Learning Center, which is a part of the Rochester Public Schools and John Adams.

And we have a, an incubator farm, which is a new initiative this year.

So total we have about, we say around six acres.

It's kind of hard to measure, but we have over 160 people growing food.

160 families growing food with us.

That will throughout the six sites.

- You mentioned that, you know, the majority of the growers are coming from other places where they're, they're eager to continue to, do their, (stuttering) I'm sorry.

They, they want to continue to maintain and practice their indigenous growing practices.

Getting access to foods that, you know, are familiar to them.

Can you talk a little bit more about what other needs your growers have and how The Village works to empower and support them?

- Sure.

You know, I am always cognizant that I am an immigrant here too.

My family came here largely from Ireland, Germany and I'm fourth generation.

And four generations ago, there was much more land available for a better price.

So, you know, we're, we're trying to connect people with, with that opportunity to have access to land.

The housing situation in Rochester, it's hard to find places where you can grow in your own or around your own home, on your own property.

So we're providing that opportunity just to have that space for people who might live in an apartment or, you know, condominium, or just more heavily shaded, smaller neighborhood.

And then we also provide water at our gardens, which is you know, if you're going to have a garden, especially in a year like this, when we're having a drought, you've got to have that water access.

We provide the tilling.

We also have a lot of volunteers that do a lot of work for us to help map out our plots, to do some spring and fall kind of clean up.

We have a lot of elderly folks who, who need a little bit more support with some of that stuff.

We've brought in compost stations.

The one of the Channel One food gardens was, was very large and we had, it had about 80 gardens there, we've since expanded.

But one of the things we brought in was just compost station so that people have a place to put their garden waste.

And then we can bring that back into the soil and continue to build the soil biology and create healthy garden space.

- So you have an event coming up, I'm sure it's been challenging to put things together, especially in the year that we've been through.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the event and how the community can participate?

- Sure.

So, Farm Fest will be happening on September 18th from noon to 4:00 PM.

It is at the Covenant Church site, which is our largest garden site.

There are foods from all over the world there.

We have over 15 different cultures represented there.

So it's a great place to go and check out just different plants that you've probably never seen before.

We have, we'll have some entertainment.

We have some Cambodian music that will be there.

We will probably have some other arts and crafts activities.

It's kind of all still coming together and building right now.

We have a meeting this afternoon actually to start finalizing things.

And we are still looking for vendors.

If you are a local artisan or you're growing food and you want to participate, you can email me at contact@rochvillage.org, or check out our website at rochvillage.org.

- Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Amanda.

I hope you get connected to the vendors you need and community to continue to support the work of The Village.

(upbeat music) Be sure to stick around.

We have much more coming your way on RTown.

We check in with The Village Agricultural Cooperative and we learn about community schooling and how we can support these students.

But at first, we had to Eureka Kids Childcare to learn how they're helping children become global citizens, in this week's RCulture segment.

(bright music) - You know, I've learned so much about United States that it's a country that is welcoming for immigrants.

So I never had any doubts that, you know, I will be able to make a good living here and be successful if I put my heart into it.

My name is Mangesh Mane, I work in Mayo Clinic.

And I think we also have a business.

It's called Eureka Kids Childcare Center that we opened three years back.

- My name is Hema Sai Kishore and I work with Mayo Clinic, in the I.T.

division.

And I, we also run a childcare center here in Rochester, Minnesota.

- So I did engineering, computer engineering back in India.

And that time our company was, you know, growing field.

and I thought more opportunities were there in U.S.

So I decided to migrate to United States.

I came to, to a company in India who had a sister company here and came to Chicago, was my board of entry.

Worked in multiple places.

Worked in Chicago.

Worked in Florida, Ohio, California, Alabama, and eventually came to Minnesota.

And now Minnesota is my home since 1999.

- So I grew up in India in the Southern part of India.

As you know, India is very diverse with a lot of different cultures.

We grew up in a joint family.

So it was a family of 25 people with all the aunt, uncles, siblings, everyone together.

I came to Dallas through my job at IBM, and lived there for on year.

And that's when I connected with Mangesh and I traveled to Rochester.

I liked the place.

I liked the family and then decided to move into Rochester.

We got married and I into Rochester with my two kids.

So he had two kids.

And if you see our family, you will not say that, you know, we are a blended family.

- We got married in 2015.

We both have our own history.

I went through a struggle in my life, with my first marriage.

Hema went through her struggles in her first marriage.

Luckily we met together online.

And when we came, we thought, you know, we need to do something different because we had lost so much time in our first marriage.

And we wanted to basically see, what can we do different on two levels.

One, for our personal satisfaction.

And the second is Rochester, this town has given us so much in the last 20 years.

And how, what can we do differently and give it back to the community, in a meaningful way.

- After we settled in, it was a settling period of two years.

Two or three years.

Then we decided, okay, now we need to settle our financial life.

Plus we like the Rochester community a lot because this community was diverse.

As compared to when I lived in Dallas, it was very different.

I could see a lot of difference between Texas and Minnesota as well.

Forget about India and U.S., Texas and Minnesota itself was too different.

And I love kids.

Mangesh also loves kids.

And then we felt, you know, we see the kids growing up and you know, every day when the kids are learning something and seeing the kids grow in itself is very satisfying.

- So we both sat together and said, you know, we came up with different options, but decided to, you know, open our create our own childcare center, because we had experienced that problem, you know growing up.

Finding a good quality childcare for our own kids that caters to diversity and inclusion.

And our staff is very diverse.

Most of our kids come from a diverse families, from different backgrounds, different cultures.

And we celebrate all their cultures, all their festivals.

We also have cooking classes, yoga, you know, dance classes.

- So we try to teach the kids that okay, there are these people from different cultures here.

So that way, you know, growing up, they are aware that there are people, with different color, different culture, different religion, that aspect.

It is very important that kids know.

So that way it's not a cultural shock for them when they go to school or maybe at work.

With regard to food, also, we try to bring in that multicultural cuisine.

What we try, what we try to do is take the best of the worlds from different cultures.

And, you know, try to provide that for lunch or breakfast.

And kind of encourage the teachers to talk through when the kids are eating those foods.

Talking about which culture that food is from.

And, you know, like makes it diverse.

- We're trying to give a fulfilling experience for kids at this young age.

Something that we got, me and Hema got at a later stage.

Now we can do that and give it back to the community, to these young kids, so they can be prepared to become a global citizen.

- [Nicole] For more information about this story and other RTown features connect with us on Facebook, Twitter @ksmq #RTown, or ksmq.org/RTown.

(bright music) - Hi, I'm Danielle Teal, your moderator for the RTown Spotlight where we feature organizations, events, and happenings across the community.

We'd like to bank 125 Live for hosting and lining up our guest.

And I'm especially excited for our guest today because I actually know Erin Vasquez.

She is in the community and works at a local school, doing some really good things.

Erin thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

- Really appreciate your efforts in the community because you do help those that need support at the schools related to students and that sort of thing.

So can you give a little bit more background about yourself and what the community closets are within the public schools?

- Okay.

So a little bit of background is actually my role is technically a Community School Site Facilitator.

And in Rochester we have five community schools.

We have John Marshall.

We have Gage at Riverside Elementary.

We have the Alternative Learning Center.

And this year Phoenix Academy will be joining the four of us.

And really community schools are a lot of things, but really the idea behind them is to align school and community resources to support students.

And that happens in a lot of different capacities.

We all have site facilitators.

So we really work together in individual sites, but also kind of coordinating our efforts.

So you brought up the Community Closet.

And I think for many people in the community, when they think of community schools, really having a resource room is the first thing they think of.

And it is an important part of community schools.

It's one piece of community schools.

And really the idea behind a resource room is that kids have what they need to kind of eliminate the barriers to being successful at school.

So maybe that is, they have school supplies.

Maybe is they have access to food.

Maybe they have access to clean clothing.

Maybe they have access to hygiene supplies.

So we all have our resource room as part of our community school initiatives that students and families can access with an open door policy, to any student who attends that school.

- We know the pandemic has been challenging.

I've seen the photos of you sharing those resource room, and it's incredible what's offered in there as you, you know, shared and alluded to.

How have the needs changed, have they changed during the pandemic?

- Well, you know, I can speak from the secondary level, you know, because the secondary level, we were basically out of school for an entire year.

So a lot of our outreach was actually going to our families.

We had a lot of us that were doing home visits and on those home visits, we would oftentimes take things with us that students would maybe traditionally access through our community rooms.

But also, and a lot of people heard about this, it's just technology access.

So kind of working to support students with technology needs, meaning maybe take them a hotspot.

We might be helping them set up the hotspot.

Taking them computers.

So really just making sure that we go to where they are, versus them having to really seek us out when they maybe most needed support.

- Awesome.

Thank you so much, Erin for being here today.

- [Erin] Of course.

(rock music) - Hey, this is Michael LoJack coming to you again from my home office, World Headquarters, with your RTown rundown.

Welcoming Week is coming up.

We will be celebrating it from September 10th, to the 19th.

This is a nationwide event, but being celebrated here locally in Rochester as well.

This is about welcoming new folks to our community, whether they're from across the county or from across the world.

There are a number of local events that will be going on in conjunction with these activities.

Some that I've highlighted are a diversity council training on what is called, "Gracias Hosting", to make sure that we make our communities inviting and welcoming to other folks who are not maybe from the same background as ourselves.

And also belonging begins with us.

And one of the things that caught my attention there is the Minnesota chamber of commerce will have a presenter talking about the importance of immigrants and how they affect our economy.

In addition to that, there'll be local events like the night market and some other events.

I encourage you to follow the link below and find some events that might look good to you and get involved.

Also going on.

It is once again, time or Greek Fest.

And if there's one thing we know about Greek Fest, it's the food.

Just like last year, Greek Fest is transition, and it's going to be a drive-through event.

But if you follow the web link here, you'll be able to see how you can order and pick up food.

Once again, it's not the same Greek Fest as a non COVID times, but it's a fantastic opportunity to support folks in our community.

Additionally, looking for some music this weekend?

I noticed that Amy Apps is going to be playing at Fiddlehead from 12 to one on Saturday.

And Fernando is back in town.

He will be doing both brunch at Blue Duck and the patio at a Avani.

That's a Fiddlehead's other location this weekend.

And on Friday nights, an opportunity to get to the Civic Theater and they have an end of summer improv.

Well, I do not agree with end of summer, I do love all the things that are going on at Art Center.

That's just a little bit of what's going on in Rochester.

Catch next time.

(singers beatboxing) - As part of continuing to monitor the spread of COVID-19 in the community, the city of Rochester is looking in what may seem like the unlikeliest of places, our wastewater.

Here to tell us more about this important work is Director of Public Works, Wendy Turri.

Welcome to RTown Wendy.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

I love talking about this topic because I think it's been very successful.

- Fantastic.

It's super interesting.

And my question to you to start us off is how does this wastewater monitoring for COVID-19 work?

- Sure, sure.

So basically we all shed the virus.

If we, if anyone who has COVID-19 will shed the virus and we shed it, you know, in the bathroom basically.

About any there's, and this is new research, new information.

But anywhere between five and they say up to 17 days.

Most of our data has showed between five and eight days.

So it's actually the one area where we can take, look at kind of predicting what's going to happen in terms of cases and outbreaks that kind of thing.

So, and we shed it and then we at the wastewater plant, as part of what we already do, is we collect samples that are for the whole city.

We collect the whole city and it's 24 hours and we composite it.

So it's a sample that is representative of really what goes on for that whole day.

And we take that sample and then we actually are having Mayo, and I can, I'm going to talk a little bit about that collaboration.

But they do the monitoring and that tells us, through doing an RNA testing, how much of it tells us whether or not there is any COVID.

And it also tells us how much is in, about how much is in the wastewater.

Which is then an indicator.

And it's lined up fairly closely as to what's going on in terms of the cases.

- Wow, that's a lot to unpack there.

I, you said the, the sample.

So the samples, when, when Mayo's looking at the samples and you have the technicians looking at those samples, they're looking specifically for RNA, that matches up as a marker for COVID.

- Correct.

It's a COVID and COVID-19 marker, correct.

- COVID-19 marker.

And I mean, you said that it's a predictor.

How accurate have you found this testing to be?

- Sure, sure.

- [Nicole] As far as being able to predict those, yeah.

- Well, okay, so we've been, you can, if you look at it, we've been graphing it.

We started it early on about, about a year ago.

And we were the University of Minnesota, Duluth, had actually started doing this.

They asked for our wastewater, we gave it to them, and.

but we weren't getting the results back soon enough.

We had been hearing and we'd been going to a few seminars and hearing that this could maybe be a way to predict and, and maybe catch it it's an outbreak somewhere, or at least help people to change their actions.

So we started sending samples out about once every two weeks.

And, and so like last November we saw the spike before it actually came.

And that was that's been by far, our biggest spike was last November.

And then, and then we realized though it was kind of expensive.

So we thought that's when we really worked to figure out, well, how can we work more collaboratively.

We knew Mayo had the equipment to do this.

We knew we didn't have the knowledge that Olmsted County did in terms of cases and, and sort of really how to change community actions.

And we also knew that, we worked with the University of Minnesota Rochester to have like students help do the testing.

So we could figure out ways to kind of make it as low cost as possible.

And we, so we got this collaboration with the four of us, four different groups working together to do the monitoring, which started in, in February.

So we kept monitoring, we'd send out samples.

But that was once every week.

And then once in February, once Mayo was able to do the monitoring, then that started to be a once like, two to three times a week.

And now we're actually doing four times a week, which gives us better information.

And has shown, you know, really we've, we've, we've seen the spikes before they've hit.

We had a big one in last November.

We had one in March, April timeframe.

And then starting about the middle of July, we saw that spike before it started hitting that we knew we were going to hit it.

So it's been a really good predictor.

- That's fantastic.

So, I mean, we're, we're currently on the rise as well.

And so I'm sure the data is reflecting that a bit as well.

- Yes, it is.

We get our results on Friday.

So we're anxious to see where they'll be this week.

We're hoping, hoping that they plateau off pretty soon.

- I mean, so far it sounds like it's been really helpful.

It's helping inform, you know, decision making and ways to support.

I guess, navigating and mitigating that spread of the virus.

What are the limitations?

Are there limitations to what you can find in the wastewater?

- Well, in terms of COVID, you know, we know we aren't able to do it.

We, you can actually also look at the variance.

We currently aren't doing that here.

But Metro, there's like three cities that are really actively doing monitoring, and the Metropolitan Area is one of them.

And they're doing the variant testing.

And so that is another thing.

And what they've seen, it's interesting to watch, that the Delta variant started to rise in June, up in the Metro area.

And then by July, it was three quarters.

The only variant that was in the wastewater was Delta.

And now it's a hundred percent.

So kind of interesting to watch.

In terms of other parameters, you know, that if people are, we're learning so much with this and kind of opening people's eyes and people have other ideas about, you know, is this something we could look at opioids, for example, in your community to really get a better.

I mean, it's a true reflection of what's going on.

So that's something that's being talked about.

I'm not necessarily in the city of Rochester, but just in the country itself.

And then also there's been some discussion about, could we do this with the, the, you know, annual flu, you know, that comes out and see if you could kind of predict when we're going to have a peak there.

Again, new things, kind of exciting, exciting times that, you know, you get to use wastewater for other things, right.

- Definitely.

And I think, I mean, there, there has been at least a history of, in other parts of the country too.

And I think of the worlds, of using wastewater to test for other infections diseases and things like that.

So there's definitely, you know, some precedent there.

You know, I think a lot of us who don't work so closely with Public Works as you do, obviously, you know, our wastewater leaves our house and we don't think about it again.

Can you just talk a little bit about, you know, just how, how that data, I guess is used and yeah.

I guess for folks that are sort of having that kind of like light bulb moment, like, wait, I didn't think about that before.

- We discharge the wastewater, the treated wastewater, into the Zumbro River.

And in order to do that, we have to have a permit by the State of Minnesota.

And we have to, we monitor our wastewater for, you know, pathogens, you know, kind of just to make sure it's safe for humans, for health wise, as well as for the environment.

So we monitor for, you know, how many organics are in there for all kinds of different parameters.

So we've been doing that forever, right.

And we want to make sure it's safe.

We're using it as a tool.

We're making sure the county's informed, so they have they're part of this collaboration.

And then we, and you know, part of bringing this information to the city, so that we're all informed about this, where the wastewater numbers are.

And I regularly get asked, well, where are our wastewater numbers?

Because people realize now that it's a predictor.

In the beginning, it was well, okay, Wendy, whatever.

But you know, they really, I think people are saying that this, it certainly has some value.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much, Wendy.

Thank you for the work that you're doing to help keep us safe.

And we look forward to continue to stay on top of the data.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us today for more wonderful content produced right here in Rochester.

Please be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter at #RTown.

Be well and stay safe.

And we'll see you next time on RTown the show about Rochester.

(upbeat music) (gentle bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.