McKenzie County ND

The aroma and look of an Internet Cafe swept into the Healthy Hearts Wellness Center Monday morning.

A gift valued at $1,000, plus an additional $700 worth of paper and toner supplies, was delivered to McKenzie County Healthcare Systems’ Healthy Hearts Wellness Center on Monday, Aug. 11, 2008. A small group of ladies enjoying their “after-exercise” coffee and visit, rejoiced to consider future lap-top sessions amid their conversations in this same comfortable location.

Mike Miller of Minot, who is tech support and trainer through the Extension service of North Dakota State University, set up the Dell 1125 multi-function black and white laser printer and a “choice” Dell Desktop dual-core 2.4 GHz processor, Vista, Home Premium, 2 GB memory, 500 GB hard drive, and 20-inch wide-screen flat panel display in the Wellness Center lobby.

The gift, state of the art technology, was a prize that Dale A. Swenson, county agent Marcia Hellandsaas, Dorothy Reil, Peggy Hellandsaas, Rev. Timothy Swenson, and Jan Dodge, bloggers of McKenzie County’s Horizons program of Leadership to Reduce Poverty, won through meeting and exceeding the program’s blogging challenge. See http://mckenzie.communityblogs.us/

Pictured left to right are Lael Reed, Reil, Dodge, P. Hellandsaas, T. Swenson, M. Hellandsaas and D. Swenson. (The framed award held by Hellandsaas and Swenson will repose above the computer cubicle.)

“People will have another reason to come here and congregate,” smiles Miller, after pre-installing Microsoft Office 2007, and other productivity software. “Any topics they may discuss will have a “world of information’ easily accessed through the Internet to enhance their conversations.”

According to Lael Reed, Rehabilitation manager of the wellness center and McKenzie County Physical Therapy department, “It is exciting to have this computer for our customers to use. People have the option of bringing in their own lap-tops to use the wireless Internet connection. Customers can utilize the printer and scanner connected to the computer. We want to encourage high school and college students to come to work out, have a cappuccino, latte, smoothie, or chai tea and enjoy this new service! A huge ‘Thank you’ to those individuals that work with Horizons that thought of our facility to make this happen in our community. Stop in and blog your favorite topic!”

CEO Dan Kelly of McKenzie County Healthcare Systems says, “The Horizons program of Leadership to Reduce Poverty is an excellent grass roots organization with formidable goal of reducing poverty within McKenzie County. I thank this organization for their efforts in securing this computer system. The McKenzie County Healthcare System Healthy Hearts Wellness Center is pleased to serve as a site for the placement of the computer. I hope that community members will use the computer and in doing so, think of the Horizons Program.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under 12. Community: Structural Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.