Top City Live is a grassroots group of students committed to seeing Washburn University (WU) students engage as active members of the Topeka Community. Their mission is to provide information to fellow WU students about events, opportunities and ways to be involved with Topeka so they can take an active role in shaping the future of our community. The website, as well as other social media such as Facebook and Twitter, have been valuable tools used to accomplish their mission.

"As students, we recognize this community is as much ours as anyone else's and we want to become active participants in it, as well as live it up!" said Angel Romero, Washburn Law student who initiated the creation of this group.

With the goal of hosting group events bi-monthly, they hope WU students experience Topeka LIVE. And through knowledge and regular interaction with all the great opportunities and events Topeka has to offer, it may result in an enhanced quality of life and emotional connection for students to the Topeka community.

In an effort to keep WU students informed and engaged in the upcoming city council election, this group will soon release a Voter's Guide featuring candidates for the Topeka City Council District 6, which is the district WU is located in. Questionnaires were sent to all four of the candidates and responses were compiled to make this guide, which will be released soon. Watch their social media for updates.

For more information about Top City Live, check out their new website at TopCityLive.com. Or check them out on Facebook at facebook.com/topcitylive or Twitter @topcitylive

Achieving a community-wide vision starts with an idea. However, sometimes gathering together the resources to get the idea moving toward action can be a daunting step. Heartland Visioning offers the opportunity of seed funds to help make that first step in action implementation.

Seed funds are available to vision partners needing support in the early stages of implementing strategies from the Heartland Visioning Strategic Plan. These seed funds have been made possible through a grant from the Kansas Health Foundation. The Kansas Health Foundation is a private philanthropy dedicated to improving the health of all Kansans. For more information about the Kansas Health Foundation visit www.KansasHealth.org.

Vision Partners are individuals or groups of individuals who come together endorsing the Heartland Visioning Strategic Plan and have officially adopted a strategy to implement from the vision plan.

To become a vision partner, or for more information about the seed fund program, including a seed fund application, contact the Heartland Visioning office. 

In January, the 36 member class attended a two day retreat to kick off the program and will continue to attend day-long sessions bi-weekly through May, learning about challenges facing the City of Topeka and Shawnee County. Through this course, the participants will learn how they, as individuals, can work to influence community. As part of the class requirements, they will be divided into five groups working on projects which will be implemented in the spring of 2011. These projects are meant to address some of the issues discovered through the course. Members of the 2011 class were chosen from more than 300 nominees representing a variety of backgrounds and a cross-section of the community including two high school students.

Mohwinkle joined the Heartland Visioning staff in September of 2010. While Mohwinkle grew up in Shawnee County, this experience will give her a more extensive knowledge and background of where and how the Heartland Visioning Strategic Plan can be applied in our community. 

As you have seen, we started the new year off with a fresh new look and feel to our website. Visit frequently as we continue to add updates to foundation team pages. 

Recently added was a video featuring some of our volunteers. Also, with the addition of a get involved/donate button on the site, we hope to add some ease to those interested in volunteering time or helping us reach our fundraising goal for the 2011-2013 campaign.

If you haven't seen the latest news visit us at www.HeartlandVisioning.com