Next Step AdventureMartha helps you do, what you do, better then you did it before…

Get Healthy

Posted on Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Driving to Florida for vacation, we listened to three books—Connected, Thrive, and Switch. I learned about all of them when I worked with Healthy Polk 2020 last summer. My task was to gather a group [...]

Honor Your Mother

Posted on Friday, April 8th, 2011

Procrastination? Grandiosity? Too many balls in the air? I had the idea at one point to post on “woman in history” each day last month. Now we are 8 days into April, and I am [...]

Fight Poverty

Posted on Monday, March 28th, 2011

I recently purchased a Community Action Poverty Simulation Kit from Missouri Association for Community Action, and I’m doing my first program with it tomorrow. It took me about six months to make the decision to [...]

Push the Edge

Posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2011

We just did our fifth, Internet-based radio show–We’re Entrepreneurs. We Can Help–Women on the Edge. For several months, I played around with the idea of a weekly radio show. Then last fall I asked my [...]

Be Inspired

Posted on Sunday, December 12th, 2010

I’m on a news break right now. All the bad news from around the world and around the nation was getting me down. It’s overwhelming when you are just one person, and you don’t see [...]

Clean and Green Your Second Grade Class

Posted on Sunday, October 24th, 2010

With this Clean and Green Second Grade Program Guide, the first phase of the Keep Iowa Beautiful service learning, litter-free schools, environmental education, character building program is officially ready for piloting! With help from the Waste Commission [...]

Celebrate Service

Posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010

I grew up in southern California, and have often been asked what I’m doing in Iowa. But I’m proud to live in a state with such a strong history of  civil rights, fairness and equality. [...]

Help Evaluate Chrysalis After-School

Posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

As it always does, the school year has somehow disappeared, with May catching me unprepared! It’s time to collect information about your work with the Chrysalis Foundation’s after-school girls’ groups so that we can report [...]

Join the Movement

Posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Go outside! It’s spring, and Iowa is joining a broad based movement to renew a close, personal relationship with the out of doors.

April 10-11–As part of Iowa’s “Reconnecting Children with Nature” effort, the Department of [...]

Cross a Chocolate River

Posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010

This is a great team building activity I’ve used for many years. Once at a 4-H Camp, we used 4-H Box Lids as the “marshmallows.” When I facilitated a program based on the Wizard of [...]