By Sally Miskavige, Grand Forks Children’s Museum Board Member
While we started visualizing the Grand Forks Children's Museum a few years ago and plans have been percolating, the last year has shown tremendous growth, progress, and momentum… here are just a few of the recent achievements:
Construction and conceptual designs completed;
Fundraising shifted into high gear with significant funds donated from the state and local governments, many generous donors, held numerous successful fundraisers, and received numerous grants from local and national organizations;
Recruited many motivated volunteers from our Grand Forks Community;
Created alliances with many children’s museums across the country;
Held proof of concept in the form of our first Full STEAM Ahead event;
Second Full STEAM Ahead will be held shortly, and is promising to be bigger and better than the first;
Surveyed the community to identify ideas, likes, dislikes, wants and needs;
Plans underway for the breaking ground in construction in 2024;
Hired our first official employee;
Engendered overwhelming community support in Grand Forks.
…and we now have our first official office!
Many thanks to Mike Opp at Oxford Realty, who donated three office spaces for the new headquarters of the Grand Forks Children’s Museum. These offices are located at 515 Demers Ave, Grand Forks.
We are so very grateful to the many volunteers who came by to see our new space and to help us get set up and acclimated. Special thanks to Deb Opp who worked valiantly to set up our new signage. And, also special thanks to Matt Norby at Norby’s Work Perks for helping with ergonomic chairs and office storage provisions. Thank you all, for your help and generous support.
The board of directors, employees and volunteers have been working in ad hoc offices, wherever space could be found. Now that we have our new ‘home’, we will be meeting here…one more step in the process of bring the Grand Forks Children’s Museum to fruition.
Feeling very grateful today. Thank you, Mike, for the space, and Deb and Matt for making it our new home. To all our friends in the Grand Forks Community…be sure to stop in, meet the team and see our progress.
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