The Daily Nonpareil – Scott Stewart
“Dan Kinney won a thumb wrestling match in front of a group of about 20 educators, nonprofit workers and community members Wednesday afternoon. The Heartland 2050 Education Committee held an organizational meeting at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center, sitting near the midpoint of the eight county area of Nebraska and Iowa served by the regional initiative. Kinney, the committee’s chairman and the president of Iowa Western Community College, defeated Stuart Shell, an architect with RDG, in thumb wrestling to launch a discussion on collective impact. Other topics for the meeting included reviewing work so far and discussing next steps for the planning process. “How can we have conversations and collaborations and find ways that we can all work together and we can all win?” asked Karna Loewenstein, coordinator of Heartland 2050, an initiative of the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency. “We’re used to the different counties, the different cities, Nebraska vs. Iowa, competing. What we’re asking you to do at Heartland 2050 is let’s think of ourselves as a region.” MAPA has been working for years on plans for the metropolitan area – including Pottawattamie, Mills and Harrison counties in southwest Iowa – to accommodate a population growth of about 1.5 million people in the metro area by 2050. Last December, a vision document was created that outlined several goals, including one to provide all area residents with access to a high-quality education.”(more)