"Over a decade of working with state, county, municipal
and private agencies and academic institutions in the
development of conferences, classes and programs about
our Upper Midwest Amish neighbors."

Regional Research Associates offers the only professional specialized consultation services on the Amish in the Upper Midwest* for social service, environmental, medical, legal and circuit court, safety, and emergency and disaster response agency personnel.

Deborah Morse-Kahn is a specialist in American ethnic and religious communities, and one of only two regional professionals advising on the culture of the Upper Midwest Amish and other ‘plain peoples,’ coordinating frequently with Upper Midwest state and county social service teams, health agencies, and first responders on working with this very special population which she believes to be “perhaps our greatest historical success in American religious freedom.”

A trained mediator, Deborah has served as consultant and as expert witness in Midwest district court cases involving the Plain peoples. She was an international media consultant on the events of the Nickel Mines tragedy in 2006. 

Best known regionally for her writing, she has authored numerous regional newspaper commentaries and has written ten books to date, including Born Amish, a co-authored study of the lives of women in Amish culture which won an Iowa book award in 2004. 


THE AMISH IN THE UPPER MIDWEST

The Amish communities of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa have nearly tripled since 1970. Wisconsin now has the fourth largest Amish population in the United States, behind Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. 

If your county does not yet have an Amish or Mennonite community, it may soon have one or more in the coming years. Likely one of your neighboring counties now hosts an Amish settlement. It is almost certain that partnering agencies in your multi-county region are already working with their Amish districts.

The search for affordable farmland continues to attract new Amish families from their traditional eastern home states into the Upper Midwest, and a high birth rate continues to dramatically increase the size of these Amish settlements.

The Amish do pay taxes, but they decline to draw on many of the traditional social and medical services that our taxpayer system provides at the local, county, and state levels. Their schools are apart from our public education system as well. Unless there is urgent emergency need, Amish children and adults alike are not commonly seen by agency personnel unless direct visit plans by personnel are arranged.

Now, with the increasing size of the Amish communities in the Upper Midwest, and an ever greater intersection of Amish and non-Amish (English) life, there is real need for those managing social service, environmental, medical, legal and circuit court, safety, and emergency and disaster response agency personnel to understand the Amish church and culture, and to build bridges--liaison relationships--with the bishops, ministers, elders and families of each Amish community, whose ordnung (unwritten law of social conduct) may differ even from that of the closest Amish settlement down the road.

Programming opportunities include: