An intern is helping the city of Hillsboro and Imagine Hillsboro reach their goals. Mary Fuller is originally from a small town in southwest Iowa, she attended Iowa State, served in the Peace Corps for three years in Zambia, went back to school and is currently participating in the Peace Corps Fellows program through Western Illinois University. As a part of the Fellows Program, the second year is spent doing an internship in a rural community. According to Fuller, she's here for her internship because Hillsboro took part in the mapping program through the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs Program.

Through that mapping program, kind of the next step is to implement the things that are planned during a set of meetings, Fuller said. So I'm here now to kind of help keep moving that process forward and facilitate all the projects and ideas that people had while they were taking part in this mapping project.

According to Fuller, the mapping project is a chance for communities to plan toward where they want to be in the future.

So in a lot of ways it's very different from hiring a consulting firm and paying them thousands of dollars to come in and tell you what your community needs, Fuller said. Whereas the mapping project - you sit down with people from the community - there were old people, young people, professionals, just all sorts of different people from different walks of life at these meetings that all have one thing in common: that they love Hillsboro, (that they) want to see Hillsboro become even better in the future. So it really takes a look at what your community has, what your community wants, how your community can get to what they want and really accomplish their goals and set it out in a very well-planned and strategic thought-out way. So they have all these plans and what resources they have to actually accomplish these goals and I'm one of the resources now.

Fuller's internship lasts until December. One of the main goals during her time here is to help Hillsboro grow and develop.

There are a few restrictions on what I can do, mostly around fundraising. Fuller said. So I can't write you a grant, I can't give you any money, but if you need help with any sort of business training we can try that. The disaster planning and emergency management is kind of a big thing so if your business needs an emergency plan I can certainly work with you on that. If you want to volunteer, we can hook you up with a volunteer opportunity of some sort. That's the thing, it's so broad it can basically be anything as long as it's serving that community economic development is it helping Hillsboro grow, is it helping Hillsboro become a better place in some aspect.

You can hear the full interview with Mary Fuller here: Around Montgomery CountyThomack 3/2/16