Jun 30, 2026 · 31 min · 10 segments
What if the grant application is the thing standing between a small town and the money it needs? **Megan Langley** of **StrengthenND** asked that, then scrapped the application entirely. This episode…
Megan LangleyGuest
Max KringenHost
What's interesting is that I think when people hear that, that doesn't compute for a lot of them, right? I'm from a small town.
And I think the same, it could probably be said for you when you go to these conferences and you're like, yeah, I'm from a town of how big?
I'm from a town of 35 people, and they're like, there's no way, right? Why rural for you?
It's very much about what I want my life to be about and what type of opportunities I want to have access to.
And I think there's so much that people get wrong about rural spaces and the people who choose to live there.
And there's such a great need to facilitate more development and to just be a conduit for more of these communities to have have opportunities like any other town in the state or in the country would have.
Like rural towns are kind of great, right? And like one of the things that you're doing is you're empowering them to be great and to like welcome more people in and to have that autonomy that you're talking about to say like, because we small towners, we're also like a proud people where like we are very independent, sometimes too independent.
It gets me very excited when we talk about small towns and like empowering small towns because I think there is this expectation that we're stuck here or we're trying to get out of it.
And what I love about you is you're squarely in it and you're like, this is where I choose to be.
Well, and we did a project back in the fall of 2020 where there was just a lot of negativity that was taking place and a lot of divisiveness and just kind of a general misunderstanding about the people of this state.
And I've always felt a significant amount of pride in being a rural Marstakotan, in knowing and understanding what our state has to offer.
We'd sent it out all across the state and got 600 responses around, like, tell us the importance of rural North Dakota to you.
And the responses we've received back were so beautiful and just so related to how I grew up.
What's interesting is that I think when people hear that, that doesn't compute for a lot of them, right? I'm from a small town.
And I think the same, it could probably be said for you when you go to these conferences and you're like, yeah, I'm from a town of how big?
I'm from a town of 35 people, and they're like, there's no way, right? Why rural for you?
It's very much about what I want my life to be about and what type of opportunities I want to have access to.
And I think there's so much that people get wrong about rural spaces and the people who choose to live there.
And there's such a great need to facilitate more development and to just be a conduit for more of these communities to have have opportunities like any other town in the state or in the country would have.
Like rural towns are kind of great, right? And like one of the things that you're doing is you're empowering them to be great and to like welcome more people in and to have that autonomy that you're talking about to say like, because we small towners, we're also like a proud people where like we are very independent, sometimes too independent.
It gets me very excited when we talk about small towns and like empowering small towns because I think there is this expectation that we're stuck here or we're trying to get out of it.
And what I love about you is you're squarely in it and you're like, this is where I choose to be.
Well, and we did a project back in the fall of 2020 where there was just a lot of negativity that was taking place and a lot of divisiveness and just kind of a general misunderstanding about the people of this state.
And I've always felt a significant amount of pride in being a rural Marstakotan, in knowing and understanding what our state has to offer.
We'd sent it out all across the state and got 600 responses around, like, tell us the importance of rural North Dakota to you.
And the responses we've received back were so beautiful and just so related to how I grew up.
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