Happy Monday, everyone!  I hope you had a great weekend. My brain remains foggy after my holiday travel back to my home state of Kansas. A flight delay found me arriving in Westminster a little later than I had intended. The delay allowed me to stop by the family farm to see my parents and daughter for a few extra minutes. As we drove to the farm, I remembered the last time I was home was the Friday before Easter last year. On that trip, I took a small trailer load of personal items that weren’t ready for the trip to Maryland. A few family heirlooms and one of my favorite things; a 250-pound concrete statue of a Hereford bull. Pulling into the barnyard, I noticed “Herfie” standing proudly at the end of the path to the front door.

Over the last few weeks, the blog featured some of my thinking about the value of community. This topic has occupied a great deal of my thinking recently as I have worked to explore the place that Target has in our greater community and how Target’s past gives us direction to move forward to new opportunities and challenges. My thinking about the community is shaped by my life on the farm. My early formation involved participation in the 4-H program. We say in the 4-H pledge that our head, heart, hands, and health are offered up to better serve our club, community, country, and world. These four “H’s” culminate in the motto that we “make the best better.”  Later, I studied and then worked in a school of education shaped by the conceptual framework that teachers are community builders.

These two ideas will influence Target’s future. We at Target will build community, taking what is already the best and making it better.

At the 2023 Target Gala, we shared a video designed to begin our internal and external conversations about what responsibility Target must build a community for those we serve, our colleagues, and the greater Carroll and Montgomery County communities.

A link to the video on our website can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErnlsAkeLDA.

If you visit the blog through social media, you may have already viewed the link to the video.

Thank you for being a part of our mission to enhance the lives of others.