1000 Friends of Minnesota motivates citizens to help shape the future of their community. We know what residents are concerned about: homes they can afford, reasonable commutes, making a livable wage, safe places for their children to play, and easy access to quality grocery stores, daycares, health care clinics and other services. Our organization works with mayors, planning commissions, city councils and city staff to forge a public process that involves local residents in meaningful ways. We help cities, suburbs and townships create the plans that make great communities possible as future development occurs.

We also work with other Minnesota nonprofits on policy issues that are under consideration each legislative session. This year we’ll be working on Complete Streets: the idea that our streets should be designed with more than cars in mind. Since we all become pedestrians the minute we park our car, it’s important to plan our streets with all users in mind: cars as well as bikes, buses, and pedestrians. Completing the streets means adding trees, sidewalks, bike paths and other accommodations to make our streets safe and usable for everyone.

To get our message across about livable communities, we created a unique film series called Legacy Letters. These 1-minute films feature individuals across Minnesota talking about what they treasure in the state, and what they hope will be here for others to enjoy in the future. This partnership with Twin Cities Public Television won an Upper Midwest Emmy Award in fall 2009. The films continue to air on TPT in between regular programming.

1000 Friends of Minnesota honors our state’s place as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”; we do so through our Lakes Region program based in Brainerd. We work to ensure sustainable development along the shores of our many lakes by recognizing the outstanding efforts of individual property owners for their lake stewardship. We are holding a “Voices for the Lakes” essay contest to collect writings about our lakes. You can learn more about all of our programs on our website at www.1000fom.org. We hope you’ll join us as a Friend of Minnesota.