Laszlo’s Story

“It is difficult to see the shape of something when you are standing inside of it.”

That was how Laszlo began describing his experience at HRDC this summer.

“A community is much the same,” he said. “Most of us move through our daily lives without thinking about the organizations, relationships, and systems quietly holding the place together.”

That was one of the biggest things Laszlo began to notice during his summer interning with us: how connected all of those pieces can be when they exist under one umbrella.

“I’ve brought it up in nearly every conversation while working this summer, but it is amazing how centralizing so many programs under one campus or under one mission connects them together.”

Laszlo came to HRDC with an academic understanding of many of the issues the organization works to address. As a student at UNC Chapel Hill studying public policy, he had spent countless hours reading about food insecurity, affordable housing, early childhood education, and the role organizations play in addressing these challenges.

But witnessing that work firsthand changed the way he understood it.

“I wrote a policy brief last semester, dozens of pages long, on early childhood education access,” he said. “But no amount of writing could ever recreate getting to be a part of the Bozeman Head Start graduation this summer.”

For Laszlo, that experience captured something he had been learning throughout his internship: there is a difference between understanding an issue and experiencing the community behind it.

“It is one thing to read about food insecurity, affordable housing, early childhood education, or the role of organizations in addressing these issues,” he said. “It is another to spend time in the places where that work is happening and see the people involved.”

And as he moved between different parts of HRDC, he began to see that those connections were not limited to individual programs. They created opportunities for people to encounter resources they might not otherwise know existed.

“An individual coming to the Food Bank may encounter another resource they did not know existed,” he said. “A Head Start family may be connected to services beyond early childhood education. A volunteer might find a connection to the kind of work they want to pursue, much like I have.”

For Laszlo, the value is not simply that these programs exist.

“It is that their proximity creates opportunities for information, relationships, and resources to move between them.”

That idea extends beyond HRDC’s programs. It extends to the people who make those resources accessible in the first place.

“A resource can exist, but that does not necessarily mean someone knows it exists, knows whether they qualify, or knows how to access it,” he said. “From my experience, that is half, or really, way more than half the battle.”

That, he believes, is part of what HRDC does best.

“Creating a solution is relatively useless unless it is acted upon. HRDC exists to do this work: finding the resources, explaining them, connecting people to them, and building the systems that allow people to actually use them.”

So when we asked Laszlo to think about where Southwest Montana would be without HRDC, his answer wasn't simply about which programs would disappear.

“I don’t think it is fair to argue that none of these programs would exist or that there would be no sense of collectiveness,” he said. “People would still volunteer, families would still support one another, organizations would still provide services, and local leaders would still work to address the challenges facing the region.”

“But I do think the community would be different.”

For Laszlo, that difference comes down to connection.

HRDC connects people to resources, but it also connects programs, organizations, and community members to one another. Bringing so many services together under one mission creates opportunities for information, relationships, and resources to move between them.

Looking back on his summer, Laszlo said that is what makes HRDC’s role difficult to separate from the community itself.

“Its work has become so integrated into the lives of the people it serves, the people who volunteer, and the organizations it works alongside that its influence extends well beyond any individual interaction.”

Much of that work happens quietly. But Laszlo saw those connections this summer, and once you see how many pieces of a community can connect through one organization, it becomes much harder to imagine the community without them.

“I think it is precisely what makes HRDC’s presence so valuable,” he said. “Its influence reaches far beyond the people who walk through its doors, because it helps shape the community that all of us walk back into.”