U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar visited The Children’s Center on James Avenue in Albert Lea on Wednesday to gain firsthand insight to how federal funds are being put to use in rural communities.

The Children’s Center received a $130,000 low-interest loan through U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. Klobuchar, USDA State Director Colleen Landkamer and other USDA employees stopped to visit with the children and staff at the center. The USDA loan was used to build the site’s wing for school-age children.

“We want to highlight the great work that Rural Development is doing and how important it is that we have the ag work we do, but we also have to look at other jobs in rural Minnesota that build on the ag work,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar said child care is important in a community so parents can work, especially in rural areas where there are fewer child care providers.

Chuck Ackman, Klobuchar’s regional outreach director, said the trip was also part of the senator’s promise to visit each of the 87 Minnesota counties each year.

USDA was not the only thing discussed. Klobuchar referenced her 82-year-old mother, a former kindergarten teacher, when she spoke about the importance of education, especially early in a child’s life.

“If they get a good start in life, they’re going to do so much better in school. And our country is competing now internationally against kids from Japan and India, and we really want to be on the cutting edge and have the best education. And that starts when you’re little,” Klobucahar said.

The center recently received a $27,000 USDA grant to update playground equipment, and Children’s Center Executive Director Kim Nelson said the center was the only southern Minnesota child care center out of six applicants to be awarded grant funds.

Landkamer said The Children’s Center is one of the few of its kind — nonprofit and community-based — to receive such funding. Private centers have received similar USDA support.

The program is designed to help rural areas and communities improve, and Landkamer said that communities can’t do it alone.

“We want to get the word out that we’re here to help. Can we do it with everything? No,” Landkamer said.

While the application process for such grants and loans can be tedious, Landkamer said it’s exciting to watch the community come together to make a project successful.

Viewing projects like The Children’s Center can show federal employees what worked and what didn’t work, she said.

“You learn from every project you do. There’s always something you might do a little different,” Landkamer said.

Klobuchar recently visited European Roasterie Inc, a coffee roasting company in Le Center, and she also toured waste-energy facilities. The senator visited the construction on U.S. Highway 14, another project receiving USDA dollars.

While Klobuchar is busy with health care, she said visits like this are important to rural communities, especially during tough economic times.

“We’ve made some real progress in rural areas,” Klobuchar said. “Some of it’s because of bio fuels. We don’t want to pull back to where there were hardly any jobs.”

“People who grow up in Albert Lea should be able to work in Albert Lea,” she added.

The children were excited to have a visitor, and Klobuchar talked and played with many children, including a girl who stopped Klobuchar when she was leaving to show her pictures on a wall.

Another child was quiet around Klobuchar. When asked what was wrong, the boy told Klobuchar he’d recently gotten a haircut and didn’t feel like himself.

While Klobuchar joked that her experience with the children was more pleasant than a meeting with people yelling questions, she said she uses such experiences when she returns to Washington, D.C.

“What’s great about this is you can use an example. You can talk about going to this childcare center in Albert Lea and what a kid said and a kid that’s been there from baby on to fourth-grade and the difference it makes in their lives. It makes it more real, and you can make actual better arguments in Washington.”

“Some of these people, all they use is statistics. It doesn’t really make the point as well as a real story of what you’ve seen with your own eyes,” she added.

There were about 32 children in the room when Klobuchar visited. Nelson said that room is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Loan money was also used to build a storage facility in the basement that serves as the tornado shelter. Before the new wing, the school-age room was in a local church, Nelson said.

Klobuchar arrived at the center shortly before 9 a.m. and stayed for more than 45 minutes.

“It’s a beautiful addition. It’s just an example of making sure that money gets out there, and it’s important for me when we���re funding these kinds of programs to go and see exactly what we do. Here you have the bricks and mortar. You’re able to see it in action. You’re able to see the little kids that are learning and clearly doing incredibly well. You can just tell these kids are our future,” Klobuchar said.