Minnesotans collaborate. Help pick a winner.

Last summer, before the flap over the University of Minnesota-sponsored film "Troubled Waters," a group in southwestern Minnesota was quietly getting downstream environmentalists together with upstream farmers to talk about agriculture and the condition of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.

At roughly the same time, a handful of Somalis and Native Americans were meeting because they noticed the tensions that had been building in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis. Young people in the two groups had been clashing, and rapes and assaults had been reported.

Meanwhile, in Rice County in southern Minnesota, colleges, service agencies and others are talking about new ways to approach how children are growing up in marginalized families. Can organizations listen better to the people they serve? Can people who need help understand better the resources available and how they can help themselves?

Three efforts by Minnesota residents to get people together to solve a problem in their community.

You can help decide which one should win a $25,000 grant from the Bush Foundation to continue or expand by voting in the foundation's InCommons Collaboration Challenge.

Voting among the three opened today and remains open until Dec. 10. The three collaborations were picked from among 20 semi-finalists after more than 200 ideas were suggested from around the state. The challenge is an effort to highlight how Minnesotans can take action to deal with challenges.

Among the 200 possibilities were a great range of ideas, but the three possibilities chosen as finalists are great examples of tackling problems that so easily, typically perhaps, quickly break down into polarized arguments. Take a look and pick your favorite.

Disclosure: MPR is a Bush Foundation partner in the InCommons project.

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