Day 1: TALK STORY with The Little Dozer with Ken Donnell and Nance Presser

 

“The critical resources we used for this were imagination and creativity— things that are always with us, even immediately after a disaster. And by doing this, we have helped ourselves heal ourselves, we’ve helped our community heal.” —Ken Donnell

 

“Children in our community haven’t had the opportunity to share what happened to them.” —Nance Presser

 

2024 WILDFIRE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

 

After a disaster, children often don’t have the opportunity to process and share their experiences. Their voices can get lost in the chaos of recovery. But one community found a way to empower their young ones to tell their stories.

Ken Donnell, the founder of the nonprofit The Gift of Music, wrote “The Little Dozer That Did” after observing a local rancher’s heroic actions during the Dixie Fire. With the help of Nance Presser, the book transformed into a community-driven children’s coloring book and musical play. Involving local artists and educators, the project empowered young survivors to share their own stories.

From using imagination as a critical resource for recovery to adapting the story for other disaster-affected areas, this conversation offers a blueprint for supporting and amplifying the voices of children in times of crisis. Listen in. 

 

Highlights:

  • 00:22 No Words Can Express
  • 03:37 The Little Dozer
  • 07:33 The Little Dozer in Spanish
  • 09:01 The 3 Basic Tenets of Wildfire

 

Tweets:

Stories do heal. In this discussion, Ken Donnell the author of The Little Dozer That Did, and Nance Presser (editor), share how a children’s coloring book is inspiring others to find their voice and rebuild. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #podcast #wildfire #DisasterRecovery #AfterTheFire #2024WildfireLeadershipSummit #TheLittleDozerThatDid #displacement #ArtTherapy #ChildrenEmpowerment #StorytellingHeals

 

Quotes: 

00:38 “How do I possibly find words to express the range of emotions that course through us every moment after we’ve had these experiences? So the best answer I’ve been able to come up with is I’m a survivor, and I’m getting better at it every day.” —Ken Donnell

03:12 “One of the most powerful things is the ability to tell our story. Every time we tell our story, a little bit more of that anxiety, that energy begins to dissipate.” —Ken Donnell 

06:33 “After a fire, people are kind of surrounded and holding on to their own hearts, and it was hard to get community involvement.” —Nance Presser

08:24 “Children in our community haven’t had the opportunity to share what happened to them.” —Nance Presser

10:08 “The critical resources we used for this were imagination and creativity— things that are always with us, even immediately after a disaster. And by doing this, we have helped ourselves heal ourselves, we’ve helped our community heal.” —Ken Donnell

 

 Meet Ken Donnell, Author of “The Little Dozer That Did”

Ken Donnell is a Greenville resident who lost his home in the devastating Dixie Fire of 2021. Driven by a desire to help others cope with the trauma of displacement, he created “The Little Dozer that Did!”, a children’s coloring book based on the true story of a bulldozer that helped protect Greenville from the wildfire. Donnell found that the book has also resonated with adults, offering a positive way to process the emotional toll of the fire. Inspired by its success, he plans to write sequels about the Little Dozer’s adventures, helping to heal and inspire others in the face of adversity.

 

Meet Nance Presser, Editor, “The Little Dozer That Did”, Consultant at ReCoverCa

Nance Elaine Presser is a dedicated and driven professional with over 20 years of experience in health, wellness, and fitness. She has a proven track record of success, having owned and operated successful wellness studios offering massage therapy, yoga, and tai chi instruction.  

In 2014, Nance expanded her entrepreneurial endeavors into network marketing, becoming an affiliate for doTerra Essential Oils and Enagic.  The devastating Dixie Fire of 2021, which destroyed her studio, home, and town, led her to a new path in disaster recovery.  For three years, she served as the Disaster Case Management Coordinator for Plumas Rural Services in Quincy, CA, providing crucial support to those impacted by the fire.  

Now, Nance is honored to be part of the HCD ReCoverCA team, assisting disaster survivors in securing grants for home rebuilds, rehabilitation, and fire mitigation.  Beyond her full-time commitment to disaster recovery, Nance is passionate about empowering health and wellness leaders to achieve unlimited abundance through independent distributorship. 

 

Transcription:

Ken Donnell: The most difficult experience that I have since the fire. It happens every day, multiple times a day. I get asked this question, “Ken, how are you doing?” And how do I possibly find words to express the range of emotions that course through us every moment after we’ve had these experiences. So the best answer I’ve been able to come up with is, I’m a survivor, and I’m getting better at it every day, and with that little bit of wisdom. Here’s Nancy

Nance Presser: Ken. Yeah, I get that question too, but it’s, how are you feeling? And I just say I’m feeling all of them, because that’s what we do. We feel all of them after we’re go through a disaster like this. So a little bit about the Little Dozer that did. I’ll start us off. Ken and I were obviously friends before the fire, we would have tea together at each other’s houses. We’d share holidays together, and then the fire happened. And of course, when those things happen, you kind of disassociate with people and take care of your inner community. And I think that’s what happened to both of us. He relocated to Quincy, I relocated to Lassen County, which is about 30 minutes away from Greenville, but we just kind of took care of ourselves in that immediate recovery process. And what’s interesting about fire disaster, you find your friends again, and we found each other, again, through this disaster. Pre disaster, we were both into community well being. I’ll call it that. Ken has a non profit called the Gift of Music. He would have summer concerts, summer parties, lots of music. And he even had a musical camp for children in the summers. And then me, I’m was just kind of a local community healer. So I helped seniors and high school students learn more about yoga and breath and mindfulness. And then, you know, just focused on the community’s well being.

Ken Donnell: Nancy and I both ended up on the emotional and spiritual wellness committee of the Dixie fire collaborative. And we got really involved with trying to bring spiritual and emotional resources into the community. We organized memorial services, picnics, holiday dinners, but we also found a lot of difficulty getting people to really take advantage of services and resources that were available to them. And the one thing, of course, that I think all of us realize is one of the most powerful things, is the ability to tell our story. Every time we tell our story, a little bit more of that anxiety, that energy begins to dissipate. And thank you for this opportunity to tell our story to all of you in a big way. It’s part of my healing process here right now.   

So on this committee, one of the things we decided to do was take this little story that I had written, and really, mind you, all I did was I just observed real life events where a local rancher used a little bitty bulldozer to save homes of him and his neighbors, while these big, huge dozers went up into the mountains and really didn’t do too much of anything that we could see except block the roadway all the time. And so just immediately, oh, the little dozer that did, the little dozer that wants to go help fight the fire, but can’t because it’s too small. And so anyway, it became a children’s coloring book, thanks largely to Nancy and a lot of other people on the emotional and spiritual wellness committee, and then, amazingly, it became a children’s musical play, which had its premiere performance this past August. Just every step of the way, it was people coming together to take this to the next level. And now, Jennifer, thank you for helping us to take it here to the next level. And let me give thanks to the person who never gets any recognition in a place like this, which is Tony, our sound man, would you please give him a round of applause? 

Nance Presser: All right, Tony.

Ken Donnell: Yeah. I’m a sound engineer, and we are invisible until there’s problems. 

Nance Presser: We are seeing these images because of Tony. We turned them into this morning. So, yes, this was largely, entirely in a community project. Ken had the idea. He had the story. He handed it to the emotional, spiritual wellness committee in the Dixie fire collaborative, which, if you guys haven’t gone through fires, or FEMA fires, you know, that’s a long term recovery group. And I just happened to step in at the right time, and he said, Ken, said, take this. I’ve done it. I’ve done all I can, take this. And I’m like, okay, and I just started to play with the story. I loved the story. It really shared the resiliency, and it really shared something that, as a children, as a child, we could get behind. And I just went out to educators. I said, Help me make this a little bit more kid friendly? We had a couple lots of different editing versions. But finally we said, That’s it. You say that’s it, that’s the best it can be. And then it’s like, well, how do we illustrate this? And I think Ken had started trying to get illustrators in the community to do it, and nobody was really stepping up. And I thought, well, that’s a perfect opportunity to get the community involved. Let’s get community help to do the drawings to illustrate this book.

Ken Donnell: We had four different artists contribute to the pages of this coloring book.

Nance Presser: I really wanted the children to be able to do the illustrations, but after the fire, people are kind of surrounded and holding on to their own hearts, and it was again, hard to get community involvement. I had an art therapy practitioner come in to help us with the drawings and the people who did come to the art workshops, this was an amazing experience for those people. They were able to connect to the story. They were able to connect their feelings into the artwork and really bond in those art workshops. I know that everybody took part of those art workshops. They’re still bonded today. They still have bonded around the story and around their art. After that, we got funding, of course, so we were lucky enough to get the Methodist Church and the rotary involved in our project. They funded both publications. Our first publication run was just an English version, and then and helped to get the second.

Ken Donnell: Because we began to get requests from out of area for the coloring book from Spanish speaking communities. So let’s put Spanish alongside the English text. And that was the second edition.

Nance Presser: And this impacted all of our children. We got the publications right before school ended. We made sure all as many books went out to our children’s fair, which is in May, and we made sure every child in Plumas County had the coloring book before school ended, and they went out on their own. And we also started to go into classrooms and read the story to children. And that’s when we really saw the impact that this story was making. That’s when the children started to come to us and then want to tell their story and express themselves, which we actually realize, oh my goodness, these children in our community, they haven’t had the opportunity to share what happened to them. We loved how this was impacting every child in our community. 

Ken Donnell: And these coloring books and this children’s musical play are living works of art. They’re not fixed. Every edition we do, we add something new to it. We added elements into the children’s musical play that aren’t in the book, where we began to teach more strong values, and particularly about safety, the difference between a careful of actual evacuation or running away scared, or the three basic tenets of wildfire, dealing with it, be calm, think clearly, act decisively. These are all woven into our stories here, and we have a long term goal with this, that we want to see this coloring book of which you each have a copy on your table. Please take it. There are crayons. There color. It helps you feel a lot better start coloring. And there are also some copies of the full script and music from the children’s musical play. There are more over on the table and that these are living works of art that are constantly changing. 

So if the people of Maui, if you want to take this story, add a magic turtle or a surfboard to it make it alive for your community, because one of our big goals here is to help other communities do this same thing. Find a way to tell your story. And also, for me, it’s a long term strategy about how to keep our recovery on the map of funding. Because the story is out there and constantly evolving. And something I also want to emphasize is that the critical resources we used for this were imagination and creativity, things that are always with us, even immediately after a disaster. And by doing this, we have helped ourselves, heal ourselves, personally, we’ve helped our community heal. We’ve shared this with other communities, and thinking entrepreneurially, we have created marketable products that can help our little struggling community. So we want to encourage each of you to do this. If you want to come join with us, please do so. We invite governments, businesses, private organizations, because this is not a project just for one community. This is an important project for the whole planet Earth. Thank you very much.

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