We made the best of 2025! Here's the year in review
Check out Project Optimist's 2025 impact and look behind the curtain at our finances and future plans.
Nora Hertel
53 posts
65% of college students feel lonely. Moorhead students share solutions
Minnesota State University Moorhead students – most of them LGBTQ+ – share stories of how they meet and overcome isolation.
FINAL POST Community Voices ⎸ Project Optimist staff plan for the end — and it feels good
Life goals: Complete health care directives, draft a will, and enroll in life insurance in 2025.
How Rochester and Duluth respond to mental health and substance use calls
'Ultimately the goal for us is to not have law enforcement, police officers, involved with every single psych event or mental health crisis that goes on here in the city,' said Captain Jennifer Hodgman of the Rochester Police Department.
How East African politicians are growing a coalition in St. Cloud
To explore the challenges and opportunities in local government for the Somali American community, St. Cloud Somali Community Radio and Project Optimist invited Hassan Yussuf, Abdi Daisane and Omar Podi to share their experiences and insights.
Winona residents call for zoning, funding, and empathy to spur needed housing
Winona residents see affordable housing as urgent and solvable, but success will require policy changes, creative housing models, and more community leadership.
Duluth Community Garden Program wilted. Volunteers stepped in to save it.
“I couldn’t watch it die,” said Haley Diem, who co-chairs the board and helped reshape it into a volunteer-run organization with other supporters of the gardens.
What is the proper role of guns in our community? 5 Minnesotans answer
"I don't see a world without firearms and without guns. I just want to seek a way of having them in a safe, responsible manner, where people don't have to be afraid, where people can feel safe."
Community Voices ⎸ Emotional whiplash: My big lessons on death came from giving birth
"Never have I been so close to death and birth," writes Nora Hertel, founder and executive director of Project Optimist.