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By Dan Gage, MN2050

MN2050 began last summer with fundraising and the development of a video trailer as its top two goals. The trailer helps make the case of the importance of MN2050 and will be used in our fundraising efforts. 

Our fundraising efforts have reached over $96,000 of our goal of $125,000. While we are continuing to work on reaching our fundraising goal, our success has allowed us to move forward with our work.

MN2050, along with Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), will be producing 2 hours of Infrastructure documentaries that will focus on the following:

• Roads & Bridges (30 minutes).
• Water, Storm Water, Waste Water (30 minutes).
• Ports, Rail, and Airports (20 minutes each).

Filming of the Roads and Bridges portion is complete and final interviews are wrapping up at this time. We plan is to have this section of the documentary complete by the APWA-MN Spring Conference. While Roads and Bridges is being edited, we will start the filming and interviews for Ports, Rail, and Airports. We will round out the project with the Water documentary, and look to complete everything by fall 2014.

We will continue our education efforts with TPT to drive STEM educational programs into the school systems, with infrastructure being the topic of education. Together, we feel we can educate youth about how infrastructure works, how it affects our quality of life, our economic prosperity, and long-term jobs within our state. When today’s youth become tomorrow’s leaders, they will have an understanding of the key role infrastructure plays in everyone’s everyday life.

We are also working with the MnGetStem program to link schools and mentors. We hope that one day teachers will be able to access the MN2050 website for curriculum and to request that a mentor visit their classrooms to teach about the role of infrastructure in our lives.