ANACONDA, Mont. -- Kira Owens was living day-to-day, a single mother trying to take care of her children when she lost her job at a brewery in Anaconda.

"It was hard...it's just really hard when you are working trying to get cash hoping to make enough money to buy the things your children need and you need and stuff like that," Owens said.

The brewery where she worked went out of business and with no marketable skills, Owens had no prospects for gainful employment. Her circumstances were like that of thousands of other people who live in rural Montana.

Almost 18 percent of the people in the old mining town she calls home lives below the poverty line, according to the Census Bureau. The poverty rate is higher than the state average which has hovered at just over 14 percent from 2000 to 2008.

Owens found a way out through the Horizons program, a collaboration of Montana State University, the Northwest Foundation and the Community Foundation. Established in 2003, the Horizon program brings stakeholders from small communities throughout the state together to find ways to break the cycle of poverty.

Through a local minister, Michael O'Rourke, Owens enrolled in a free training program that enabled her to become a certified nursing assistant, a job field that's in demand. She completed the required 90 hours and two years ago and has been working at the local nursing home.

"I love people. I love people so much it was just the perfect job for me to go into," she said.

Since then, Owens has been able to meet her bills and provide for children. She also says she "met the love of her life" through the program.

"Just because somebody is poverty stricken or the area is poverty stricken doesn't necessarily mean that they are bereft of anything else," said Joseph Marshall, a Native American writer.

Marshall was keynote speaker at the third annual Horizon's conference held at Montana State University in Bozeman.

Hundreds of stakeholders gathered for the two day conference. The program was established in 2003.