Ramlah's Blog: #3 - A busy second week!

5/5/2023

Ramlah at the Idaho State Capitol Rotunda

In Boise, there is a non-profit organization called CATCH which is working on providing a long-term solution to end homelessness in Treasury Valley. This organization is a member of the Boise Metro Chamber as well. They have a lofty mission to help homeless people through empowering those without housing, building collaborative partnership, and increasing public understanding to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. CATCH just remodeled their office and now they have really nice and convenient spaces inside the office. Since CATCH is the Boise Metro Chamber’s member, I accompanied Ms. Sandy Anderson, V.P., Member Service, for the CATCH Inc Ribbon Cutting ceremony for their new office. Boise Mayor Ms. Lauren McLean also participated, and it was great to get the opportunity to meet the mayor. I believe CATCH will more smoothly achieve their mission in offering a new beginning to people experiencing homelessness to get back on their feet. Their mission is such a great one.

There were three ribbon cutting ceremonies during this week for organizations which are members of the Boise Metro Chamber, so besides CATCH, I also attended the other two, which were the Idaho Small Business Development Center and the grand opening for Idaho Nonprofit Center. The Idaho Small Business Development Center is an organization which empowers small business success by providing no-cost, confidential consulting and low-cost training to entrepreneurs throughout Idaho, with the mission of accelerating business success, and the Idaho Non-Profit Center represents the interests of the state’s 9,000+ registered nonprofit organizations. Their mission is to educate, advocate, and collaborate in support of stronger nonprofits. There are a huge number of registered nonprofit organization as partners of this center. Attending these ceremonies was a pretty open opportunity for me to connect with the important people in those organizations.

As part of working on developing my public speaking skill, I attended a Toastmasters meeting with Ms. Holly. Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. It was interesting for me to attend this Toastmasters meeting, observing first, then starting practice next week.

Boise Metro Chamber regularly publishes and shares the projects, events, and happenings with the Boise business community. We have the Boise Metro Connection, a magazine-style newsletter which is produced and published every two months. The content inside the magazine features member highlights and accomplishments, Chamber initiatives and projects, upcoming events, and photos from across the Treasure Valley. We also have the Boise Valley Spotlight Magazine, which is an annual magazine with articles about the Boise Metro area which also includes a printed listing of every Boise Metro Chamber member (there are over 1,900 members). We have list of hotels in Boise as the spot for distribution of the Boise Valley Spotlight Magazine, thus the hotels visitors can access information about what we offer. We are working on distributing the Boise Spotlight Magazine too.

One unique part of the Boise Metro Chamber is that it has a program called the Boise Young Professionals (BYP). The BYP connect, empower and engage young professionals. The membership of Boise Young Professionals (BYP) is mainly comprised of the 21–40 year-old population, but is open to any “young thinking” or “young-at-heart” professional. BYP is a collective of entrepreneurs, nonprofit workers, bankers, attorneys, engineers and just about any profession in the surrounding Boise community. This week, BYP conducted an informational BYP 101 meeting in which they provided an overview of the programs and events put on by the BYP volunteer leadership and Boise Metro Chamber. Rachel Flachbart-Sladek, the Director of Development for the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children, also serves as the BYP President. She made a presentation about Ready Idaho - Invest in Early Education (Why the program exists and how BYP propose to do that etc.). I see the program that she presented as an example of simple action that can be done in Timor-Leste’s education sector too.

It was really good for me to be able to participate the Leadership Boise grand finale at the Idaho State Historical Museum, with Ms. Sandy Anderson. Really, this event has added to my knowledge on how to become an adaptive leader. The young leaders presented their projects and the way they work to give positive impact to their community. As the was event sponsored by Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, the event included a visit to the Anne Frank Human Right Memorial. The mission of the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights is to promote respect for human dignity and diversity through education and to foster individual responsibility to work for justice and peace. This memorial was built as an effort to remind people that love, justice, respect, equality, kindness and compassion are actually everywhere.

Touring the Capitol with Ms. Holly Cook was really awesome. It was unexpected that I got an opportunity meet the Idaho State Controller, Mr. Brandon Woolf. I had a whole day agenda for participating the Idaho Travel Council. Several organizations gave presentations related to travel and tourism, including the Boise Metro Chamber (Visit Boise). The meeting agenda included lodging, tax collection, and agency of record updates, followed by grant updates, grant presentations and discussion. Ms. Carrie Westergard, the Executive Director of Visit Boise did a great presentation on the annual grant proposal to the Idaho Tourism Council, where the member of the councils gave her complement for the exceptional work of the Visit Boise team. Ms. Carrie also introduced me to the Idaho Tourism Council as a fellow from Timor-Leste for YSEALI PFP program who wants to learn about the various sectors that bring positive impact to the economic development, and I got warm welcome from the Council. Thank you very much, Ms. Carrie.

This is such a great week for me and I learned a lot. I now have a pretty clear idea of working on economic development.