Currently the Kansas Sampler Foundation, of Inman, is helping change a small town in Jackson County.
Foundation Executive Director Marci Penner and Assistant Director WenDee LaPlant are leading a team of workers to give the Whiting Cafe, in Whiting, Kan., a make-over in honor of the owner, Rosa Thomas, who will have owned and operated the cafe for 25 years this August.
The cafe is in need of updates and repairs, especially since it is the local hang-out for people in the area.
Work being done is a project of the Kansas Sampler, and it is the pilot-program of the “We Kan Bank Initiative,” designed to “create accounts of community need and match them with accounts opened by individuals who want to offer services, materials, labor or funding,” Penner said.
The initiative, she said, goes beyond financial assistance for Kansas’ smaller communities, including Whiting.
“There are so many different kinds of needs a rural community would have,” Penner said. “Maybe it’s just finding a resource, or anything that’s good for the community as a whole.”
The work began Friday and is scheduled to wrap up today.
For more information about what the workers are doing, please visit the Sampler’s “Spruce Up Whiting Cafe” page.
Also, read Penner and LaPlant’s blog at http://kansassampler.blogspot.com.
Or follow Penner and LaPlant on Twitter (@marcipenner and @wendeelaplant).
Below are a few pictures the group has posted to Google‘s photo sharing site, Picasa:
