BY ISAIAH FRIZZELL
Calling All Community Members
Have you noticed a change in people’s demeanor, across society? Are folks these days quick to anger, gruff? Notice a seeming inability to discuss even the most basic ideas without resorting to parroting political talking points gleaned from TV or social media? It’s tough. We hear it from so many, while the miscellaneous columns in papers are a shining example of some of the raw thinking and pontificating that is being done, as are the various Facebook rant forums on Blaine County. We need a definite moment of remembering who we are and why we live here! We’re a community, we’re friends who love where we live and must remember what makes us gel.
There’s an event to discuss this and get to the point of communicating civilly again and coming to grips with reality versus the politicized, polarizing narratives being used to divide us in the news, whether TV, social media or newspapers.
The most important conversation about this takes place this week and you’re invited to find your mind, compassion, empathy and friendship that makes a community strong, undivided by disparate entities and fully embracing the realities of peaceful existence and discourse dominated by rational thinking, connecting and embracing the beauty of a community too strong to be divided.
Wood River Women’s Foundation
Karissa Price grew up in the Wood River Valley. After graduating from Wood River High School, she went away to college and graduate school, eventually got married, had a child and moved home around nine years ago. “I’’ve seen the Valley go through a lot of changes since my family moved here in 1973.
“After being introduced to the Wood River Women’s Foundation by a friend, I joined and I’ve been serving on the board for, well, this is my fourth year. This year I was asked to take over the education committee.
“The Wood River Women’s Foundation is a women’s collective giving organization. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary last year. It was founded by a group of women who were philanthropists and thought, what if we pooled our money together, we could have an even greater impact in supporting the Valley’s nonprofits. It’s really grown exponentially. I think we’ve given out over $5 million over 20 years to local nonprofits,” Price explained.
“We’ve done forums on healthcare, mental health, and early childhood education, which led to us doing an actual specialized grant where we gave $150,000 to start the Early Childhood Education Collective, a program that lasted for two and a half years and really was groundbreaking for us as an organization but really for the Valley to bring together business, nonprofits, educators, to talk about how we have a real childcare issue here and our kids are coming to school unprepared. It’s a collective problem that we need to solve. If we’re going to have an educated workforce in the future, we need to start early, and there’s plenty of national studies around this, but really, trying to gather the resources to say, okay, what’s an action plan based on data that we can do here in our Valley?”
Price is extraordinarily focused; every sentence is pure information and passion. She speaks precisely as the leader she is, also a member of the International Women’s Forum, a group of global leaders from across the world.
Conception
A deciding event took place in Seattle about civil discourse and connection and the crisis that we’re facing globally in a breakdown of these things. “It started out with a woman from the Edelman organization sharing their survey results on the barometer of trust and how we as citizens across the world have lost trust in our political institutions. We’ve lost trust in our media. We’ve lost trust in our churches, et cetera. Then Arthur Brooks spoke about connection and how connection and breakdowns in people’s feeling of connection can lead to many of the ailments we see in our world today, like the epidemic of loneliness, the mental health crises in not just our youth but in men and all across the board.
“Coretta Scott King next spoke about the work of her father and what it means to actually have empathy and to care about social justice and care about others and bring that forth in action in your community. The lightbulb went off! I thought, ‘Wow, can I do a version of this? Can we put together one that really gets people reconnected, having an experience of that, even for just a short period of time and get more involved to remember who we are? Because my experience of the Wood River Valley over growing up here and even coming back is that we are people who talk to each other.
“We are people who greet each other on the hiking trail, on the ski mountain, on the chairlift, on the bike path, in the grocery store. That’s who we are. That’s why people love this Valley. And I feel, and you can hear it in the dialogue amongst people, that they seriously miss that. And they’re worried that we’re losing it because of all sorts of political vitriol that’s out there that is poisoning our community, essentially.
“I talked to the board at the Wood River Women’s Foundation. Were they comfortable with doing this? Absolutely. Because it isn’t to take one side or another, it’s to bring people together.
“If we don’t talk to each other, we don’t connect. And unless we see that we have far more in common than we are different, we will lose our culture here. We will lose who we are. And I think we’d all be hurt and worse for that.
“And so I’ve reached out and spoken to some of our grantees and got their ideas. I got suggestions for panelists and I put together, I hope, a great panel. I know we’ll be a great panel of conversation and some element of momentary connection.”
Bipartisan Concern
This is a bipartisan issue, and panelists run the gamut from every sector, elders to youth, with some being Ryan Redmond from Flourish Foundation and Michelle Stennett, a longtime Democratic representative. “She has a great perspective on this of how we used to be even as a state, far more congenial to each other and far more open to compromise and working together than we have become today. Also Chanel Dixon, former Republican representative from Kimberly who’s started her own nonprofit, Idaho Solutions, which is working toward, again, a similar agenda of how do we create dialogue? Pam Morris, the editor of the Idaho Mountain Express, to talk about the Miscellaneous columns, as well as two high school students, a male and female, to share their perspective on this topic. St. Thomas Episcopal Church is inviting Rabbi Sharon to come and talk about this, about connection and community and healing. Mark Davidson of the Blaine County Recreation District (BCRD) is also going to be on the panel.
“I also realized that, in my social circle, the amount of change I’ve seen in people’s anger and frustration on the bike path has been exponential. It’s insane! I think again, people don’t realize that this wonderful world we live in here in the Wood River Valley isn’t free. The bike path and all the other things that the BCRD does are funded by us! And they’re critically important to who we are, of why we live here, and why our kids are thriving here.”
Price is emphatically excited about this conversation and the above speaks for itself.
By all means, attend this. There are around 100 seats left. It takes place at Wood River High School and is bound to be a conversational experience, priceless in its ambitions and ability to give us pause to consider how we’ve been engineered by media, social/TV/radio/print to be divided and work against rather than with each other.
Price has a wonderful story to begin the conference and if you value the community we all talk about, love and live here for, it’s worth the dialogue and one evening of engagement.
The 7th Annual State of the Valley Community Forum
will be held Thursday, February 5, 2026
5:00 to 6:30 p.m.
at The Den, Wood River High School, Hailey, Idaho, and on Zoom
The event page can be found here: https://woodriverwomensfoundation.org/state-of-the-valley/
Call: 208.309.2530 or email info@woodriverwomensfoundation.org for more info and to reserve a spot.
Is there a better discussion to be had in the Valley? We’ve all heard the grumblings and seen all the signs of discontent. Let’s talk, connect and find solutions to why and how we’ve been divided and come together.
