MAPLETON — Mapleton and Fairmont are among the newest communities to receive Town Meeting Initiative grants from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation.

SMIF, headed up by former congressman Tim Penny, give innovative communities start-up money to tackle specific concerns.

In Fairmont, community leaders hope to engage elders in the workforce. Their project will focus on creating mentorship opportunities and career development by using retirees to help mentor young people who are probably not going to go to a four-year college.

And in Mapleton, they plan to work to develop entreprenuership in the area of bio business.

“We’ve been doing this for five years. It’s really about engaging local citizens around an initiative,” said SMIF’s Elise Davis. “We take communities through coaching and training, and then we award a grant that enables them to create a project or a number of projects.”

To date, SMIF has given Town Meeting Initiative grants to 14 different communities.

Each community gets $25,000. Communities are required to match that amount, but only half of it has to be in cash. The other half can come from in-kind services or goods provided by the city.

Davis said a good example of what can grow as a result of the Town Meeting Initiative seed money can be seen in Le Sueur.

“They’re creating a community foundation to support area projects,” she said. “They also have a training program for training area leaders ... This is really about building momentum, and as the momentum builds, the more buy-in we get from the community.”

Other communities that have received Town Meeting Initiative grants include Preston, Montgomery, Lake Crystal, Chatfield and Lanesboro.

Montgomery was chosen as one of two pilot communities for the project. A Town Meeting grant helped the city take on several projects, including one that helped the city better define its historical preservation efforts.

And in Lake Crystal, a Town Meeting grant helped them “build on their quality of life.” Among the projects included in Lake Crystal’s grant were: Enhancing new signage on the highway with landscaping; adding benches and memorial bricks and trees along a newly created walking path near the new school; adding community rain gardens to improve water quality in three local lakes.

“We’ve covered our 20-county area in this work pretty significantly,” Davis said. “It’s amazing how self-sufficient this makes communities.”

Many times, Davis said, communities realize that it’s not money they need, it’s something else.

In Gaylord, they wanted a place for seniors to meet. The community had a senior dining program, but not a place to come together and be engaged or perhaps take classes.

At the same time, city offices were moving. The city came forward and gave its seniors the use of a former library building.

“So they’re starting to create this meeting place that may become a senior center or a community center,” Davis said. “They’re talking about even having it as a non-profit center. It’s a really interesting process.”