Left to right: Lakota Fund's David White Bull, Wawokiye Business Institute Small Business Success Coach, Debra and Leonard Martinez of KOLA Campground, and Lakota Fund's Tony Taylor, loan officer.

WOUNDED KNEE - KOLA Campground owners Leonard and Debra Martinez wanted to expand their business of trail rides on horses to include overnight camping with added activities.
Lakota Funds had the opportunity to assist Leonard and Debra with one of our loan products to accomplish their expansion goal.
David White Bull, Lakota Funds Wawokiye Business Institute Success Coach was able to offer technical assistance to develop sources and uses with cash flow projections.
The loan department offered suggestions and then a loan. KOLA campgrounds will include sleeping under the starts in traditional tipis, beds and showers, evening meals of traditional Lakota foods and other activities. This summer the sale of artwork/crafts and the features of the campground will be offered by the Martinez to tourists and tribal members who pass through the Wounded Knee village. To book your camping trip and to obtain more information call Debra and Leonard at 605-441-6187.
Lakota Funds technical assistance and courses are free to entrepreneurs like Leonard and Debra here on the reservation. The free classes offered: Core Four Business Planning, Financial Literacy, and Homebuyers Training just to name a few. Wawokiye Business Institute also has small business success coaches who assist future business owners with resources and technical assistance.
Lakota Funds provides services in five areas: technical assistance, financial literacy, housing, financial capital and market access. Lakota Funds makes micro loans up to $5000, small business up to $25,000, and business expansion loans up to $200,000. The last two categories require the Core Four Course and/or three years of successful business experience. Anyone wanting to start or build a business on the reservation can attend Lakota Funds upcoming meetings/trainings:
Pioneer Credit Counseling Friday May 16, 2008 10:00-11:30 a.m. at the Lakota Funds Trade Center Kyle,
Basic Accounting/Bookkeeping Training will be offered Saturday May 17, 2008 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. at the Lakota Funds Trade Center Kyle.
Free Artist Business Skills Workshop will be Monday May 19 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Lakota Funds Trade Center Kyle, SD pre-register contact David White Bull at Lakota Funds 455-2500 or email dwhitebull@lakotafunds.org.
 

 

 

Anpo (center) and David Charging Thunder flanked by their children Katyn, Quanah, Douglas, Gaberial, Joey, and Allyssa. Charging Thunder will be doing her residency at Omaha, Neb. and eventually plans to return to Gordon or the Nebraska panhandle to work as a physician.

OMAHA, NEB. - Anpo Charging Thunder's passion to care for people as a physician led her to the University of Nebraska Medical Center Rural Health Opportunities Program. The mother of six, she had five children before she even entered medical school.
UNMC is a national leader in rural programs to help alleviate the rural health shortage. Fifteen years ago it founded RHOP, a collaboration between Chadron State College, Wayne State College and UNMC.
Students applying for RHOP are considered on three criteria: their academic potential, residency in a rural Nebraska community and their commitment to practice in a rural community upon graduation.
Those students accepted are pre-admitted to the UNMC College of Medicine. Charging Thunder, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, heard about the RHOP from her mother when she was a senior in high school. She enrolled at Chadron State College in the fall of 2000, eight years after she dropped out of high school.
"I had good grades, but I was going to have to repeat a year due to absences, she said. She received her GED and began tutoring at Gordon High School in Nebraska. Four years later she became a certified nurse assistant at Gordon Memorial Hospital where she worked at the desk and as an obstetrics technician.
To pursue her undergraduate degree, Charging Thunder drove 100 miles to and from school Monday through Friday.
During this time she also continued at the hospital by working two to three evenings a week. It was during the dead hours when Charging Thunder was able to study.
"It took me eight years to get to this point," Charging Thunder said. She had a full schedule with her family and school and kept it balanced with support from her family and her husband.
She said she seen first hand when she worked at the Gordon hospital on the health of people. "I felt there could be improvements and if I entered the health care field I can make a difference," she said. After this program I plan to go back to home, we don't' have a lot of family on this side of the state, Gordon or somewhere in the Nebraska panhandle.
Her encouraging words to students who want to be doctors are, "No matter what happens in your lifetime, keep their eye on the ball, even though you may get thrown some curved balls, keep your focus, eventually it will work out," she said.
One of her visions is to have a traveling clinic, which would make it easier for rural people to get health care because of the distance factor.
According to the American Medical Association, more than 35 million people live in underserved areas, and inner cities and rural areas suffer the most dire shortages. It would require 16,000 physicians to immediately alleviate the shortage of doctors in those areas. One government estimate indicates the U.S. could require as many as 24,000 physicians in 2020 to fill the shortage.
On May 2, Anpo graduated from UNMC's College of Medicine.
Through the Accelerated Family Medicine Training Program she began her residency program in Omaha this past year. When finished, she plans to move back to rural panhandle Nebraska with her family, where she'll practice and be closer to her extended family of grandparents and relatives. Anpo's parents are Tillo Herrera and Carol Iron Rope-Herrera. Tillo is from Minitera, Neb. Carol is from Martin, S.D. Anpo's husband David is from Gordon, Neb.
Health care in Nebraska is really a "big issue," says Charging Thunder. "In almost every community there is a shortage… this is why the RHOP program is so important to Nebraska," she says.
The program is really a commitment to the quality of health care rural Nebraska residents receive, she says.
"I've been very satisfied with the program," said Charging Thunder. It provides an excellent financial aid package that makes the tuition affordable, she says.
To date, 290 RHOP students have graduated and 188 are currently enrolled and attending Chadron, Wayne State or UNMC. Almost 60 percent of graduates are practicing in Nebraska rural communities and 10 percent are practicing in rural communities in other states.
 

Trash cleanup begins on Pine Ridge Reservation	Email this page     Print this page
Posted: May 05, 2008
by: The Associated Press
PINE RIDGE, S.D. (AP) - The Oglala Sioux Tribe has started work to meet a court-ordered June 1 deadline of cleaning up 11 garbage piles on the reservation. The tribe's environmental protection director, Bob Pille, said the work was held up because of delays in getting funding. ''It took such a long time for the money to come down from the feds, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, but we've got it and we've actually begun the cleanup,'' Pille said. ''It was supposed to be a 90-day cleanup, but we're doing it in half that time.'' The trash was supposed to be picked up weekly at the 11 transfer sites and taken to a landfill, but collections fell short over the years. The court order requires not just the initial cleanup, but proper trash disposal and maintenance for up to 15 years. Rapid City lawyer Jim Leach, who represented several citizens in the legal case for the cleanup, said the court decree includes a monitoring provision designed to prevent a repeat of past neglect. ''That's where the consent decree comes in,'' he said. ''We have five to 15 years of monitoring out there. And if it reverts back to the way it's been, we can go straight back into court. I hope we won't have to do that.'' The BIA and IHS have committed more than $240,000 for the initial cleanup stage, Pille said. The long-standing cleanup and disposal burden will fall to the tribe, which has bonding authority for more than $3.5 million to upgrade its trash hauling, handling and disposal system. ''That's for equipment and all the other costs. It's quite a bit of money the tribe is committing,'' Pille said. ''We're going to get this done.''