NRDP-CSREES Partnerships
Here are some of the successful partnerships that State Councils have had with the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Services. For more information, contact Office of Community Development Desk Officer Ella Ennis.
The Alaska Rural Development Council (ARDC) co-sponsored the Alaska Healthy Community Project (AHCP) along with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Cooperative Extension Service, and the Department of Alaska Native and Rural Development. The AHCP aims to create and sustain the capacities that rural Alaskan communities need to be healthy and prosperous in a time of great change. The focus of this program will be on local people making local decisions to manage the kind and quality of life that they desire to have for themselves and future generations. ARDC and Larry Dickerson, author of Healthy Communities, have been awarded a $4,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service to complete the manual used in the Masters Program in Rural Development. Four rural Alaskan communities were initially selected to participate in a core course of the Masters Program in Rural Development, complete training on the local Healthy Community process, participate in community building and leadership training, and create a local skills and knowledge base that will be used to sustain capacities once they are created.
Colorado Rural Development Council, the Cooperative Extension of Colorado University, and the Colorado Community College and Occupational Educational System have combined forces to motivate several Colorado organizations to work together with youth to address community concerns. The Council and its partners successfully encouraged the Colorado Board of Cooperative Education Services to invite young people to participate in a series of working meetings on the future of public education. CRDC co-hosted these meetings which gave young people a voice in key community decisions.
In May 2001, the Connecticut Rural Development Council and the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System sponsored a one-day Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) workshop in Cromwell, Connecticut. The training was conducted to increase knowledge about asset-based mapping and facilitate collaborations that used this technique among community organizations. The workshop attracted 52 participants including planners, workforce, economic, and community development practitioners, municipal staff; community leaders from the public, private, and non-profit sectors; and state, federal, and regional agency staff. With the help of UCONN extension service, CT-RDC, executed the logistics of the workshop, obtaining funding from the DOL and CSREES. Speakers included experts in the field, including the Coordinator of Special Program Initiatives at Penn State Cooperative Extension and the Assistant Director of the Maine Rural Development Council.
The Idaho Rural Partnership formed a regional partnership with the Idaho Resource Conservation and Development Association, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, American Farmland Trust, and the Idaho Cooperative Extension System to conduct land use protection workshops. The purpose of the workshops was to address the issue that farmland, grazing land, and private timberland is being taken out of working production at an alarming rate in some portions of Idaho and the Intermountain West. After applying for and receiving a SARE grant of $66,195, a state planning committee met six times to design a workshop template and materials for a series of five workshops. IRP helped obtain seed funding, gathered the partners, hosted the planning committee meetings, marketed the workshops, and supplied the workshop trainer.
Illinois (Rural Partners) partnered with CSREES and a number of organizations to design and conduct a housing development workshop. More importantly, the partners compiled a document that has become the only source book available to communities that are interested in developing housing. This document, "Community Housing Development: Building a Brighter Future," is an example of how Rural Partners brought together multiple resources to further rural initiatives described in its strategic planning document, "Building a Brighter Future for Rural Illinois."
In an effort to increase interagency communication and eliminate unnecessary duplication of services, the Iowa Rural Development Council has created an electronic notebook to track a broad range of community assistance. The notebook will be location-based. For example, if the county Extension office in Mt. Pleasant is called to assist with a project related to expansion of telecommunications infrastructure, they will check the entries for Mt. Pleasant to learn of the status of any similar assistance others may be providing. The system will encourage early, effective collaboration.
Born of a rural summit on service delivery in July 2000, the Coalition for a Maine Initiative on Aging (CMIA) is a collaborative public policy education effort designed to address the aging issue in Maine. Joining the Maine Rural Development Council as founding members of CMIA are the Maine Alzheimer's Association, Maine Area Agencies on Aging, State Planning Office, Maine State Housing Authority, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, and Maine Hospital Association. In addition to helping mobilize rural summit participants and organize CMIA, MRDC facilitated coalition discussions to frame the issues and define the project approach. The Council, which provided fundraising support to this effort, also helped design and facilitate the focus group sessions and the policy round table event. MRDC will help draft the policy paper that concludes this effort.
Minnesota Rural Partners collaborated with the Minnesota Food Association to create the New Immigrant Agricultural Project, a program which helps new immigrants develop their existing farm skills and move toward self-sufficiency. With the leadership of the MRP and financial assistance from the Otto Bremer Foundation and USDA agencies including FSA, RMA, Rural Development, and CSREES, the project educates participants in the production of organic, new niche, value-added products that are not in competition with existing Minnesota farmers.
In many small Mississippi communities, high leadership turnover results in the duplication or abandonment of already existing strategies. Moreover, plans are often not tracked to study progress and past successes are not publicized. To address these concerns, the Mississippi Rural Development Council is working with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, the Mississippi Planning and Development District, USDA-Rural Development, and the Tennessee Valley Authority to implement the Community Development project. This program will better encourage strategic planning work in rural communities and will track that work and promote continuity.
In April 2000, the New Hampshire Rural Development Council received the "go ahead" to draft a memorandum of understanding between its organization, the NH Cooperative Extension Service, and the University of New Hampshire Department of Resource Economics to collaborate on the formation of a rural development institute. The institute will link the University's undergraduate and graduate students and faculty with rural community development research projects. The projects will be identified, in part, through the work of the Cooperative Extension Service's Community Development Profile program, which assists rural areas in prioritizing their needs and developing systems within each community to address these needs.
The New Hampshire Rural Development Council is co-sponsoring with the University of New Hampshire-Cooperative Extension (UNH-CE) and the Corporation for National Service (AmeriCorps/VISTA) a program to deploy Community Support Teams statewide. Designed to complement UNH-CE's community profiles, this initiative provides needed follow-up to the issue identification and goal setting processes of the community profile.
The Ohio Rural Development Program actively coordinated and promoted the Coal Combustion Products (CCP) Pilot Program in the state of Ohio. By-products from the combustion of coal create a concrete-like material that can be used in agriculture, highway and related civil engineering, mine/land reclamation, and manufacturing applications. Because coal combustion occurs more often in rural locations, its by-products provide these areas with the opportunity to develop the material in a cost-effective manner. In addition, using this material productively protects the environment by eliminating the need to dispose of it in landfills. Since January 1998, the CCP program provided technical assistance for the construction of more than 200 feedlot pads on Ohio farms. In addition, it has shared technical information with the USDA-NRCS, CSREES, and state Department of Agriculture personnel outside of Ohio on the use of FGD for agricultural applications by conducting demonstrations on using compacted FGD material as a liner for water-holding ponds.
The Oklahoma Rural Development Council (ORDP) facilitated a rural housing summit, which attracted key partners in rural housing development such as community leaders, bankers, and builders in north central Oklahoma. The key partners involved considered successful activities that would address Oklahoma's rural housing problems. The housing summit helped familiarize local municipal officials with many of the programs employed by developers in Oklahoma cities. In addition, research presented at the conference by the Cooperative Extension Service showed that not only have some counties in north central Oklahoma lost population; they have also seen a drop in available housing over the last 10 years. Indeed, census data indicates a need for affordable rural housing in areas of population decline.
Many rural residents find it difficult to qualify for commercial mortgage loans and are often hampered by a poor credit history. Although many non-profits provide homebuyer education and counseling, this support is fragmented and not universally available in rural Oklahoma. To address this situation, the Oklahoma Rural Development Council (ORDC) partnered with several organizations, including CSREES, to form the Oklahoma Homebuyer Education Association in 2000. The Association will develop a standardized curriculum to train service providers in homebuyer education and counseling and provide these services to underserved and unserved areas, largely in rural areas. It also will develop a training curriculum that satisfies requirements for the loan products offered by partner agencies. In May 2000, association partners met and formed committees, which then developed the organizational structure, mission and objectives, and a work plan. During the remainder of the year, the Association secured grant funding for its expenses, posted a request for proposals to provide management and staffing, and selected a management group. With its organization in place and staff hired, the Association has scheduled board meetings, begun to develop a curriculum, and launched efforts to recruit additional members.
The Oregon Rural Development Council's (ORDC) sponsorship of the 4-H Web Wizards web master project has had very positive results in the rural Hispanic communities of Washington County. So far, the Council has sponsored the initial training of three groups as part of the Internet Masters program, which is supported by the OSU Extension Service. The project was established in three local high schools, two middle schools, and other community computer labs. This effort resulted in 2,000 volunteer hours used in mentoring 60 youth in the after school 4-H web wizard program. It also provided 20 Latino volunteers with technical expertise used to develop and deliver bilingual computer curriculum to youth, families, and community members. In the process, it allowed adult Latino audiences to become reacquainted with e-commerce, family literacy, nutrition and health, and domestic violence prevention. The project has allowed over 1,200 community members access to computers and the Internet through use of these technologies at participating community sites. Of the 60 youth involved, 54 have experienced improvement in their high school GPA. 4-H Web Wizards were selected to participate in the launch of a national USDA initiative CyberSeniors/Cyber Teens in which youth help senior citizens learn about technology. The project developed an award winning educational bilingual web site based on national education standards in partnership with PBS.
To help agricultural producers find the resources they need to effectively execute value-added agriculture projects, the South Dakota Rural Development Council facilitated the organization of a group of service providers that support such projects, including CSREES. To keep informed about each other's project work, the group created a listserv, which allows members to be aware of project stages and become involved in a project when the timing is right for their services. Realizing that conflicting business plan/feasibility plan formats were in circulation, the group also produced a uniform format to guide all value-added agricultural projects. Lenders who finance such projects have approved this format, which bears the logos of all group members and is available in hard copy and on the Internet. The group is now documenting and sharing South Dakota's success stories of value-added agriculture projects. Another group initiative is to ensure the compatibility of federal and state definitions for financing programs. Initial efforts have involved a congressional delegation, USDA, and SBA.
The Texas Rural Partners (TRP) partnered with the Texas Rural Entrepreneurship Initiative (TREI), a vehicle for developing rural businesses through entrepreneurship in Texas, to participate in The National Rural Entrepreneurship Initiative (NREI)'s Discover State Policy Academy Program. Texas is one of two states selected as Discovery States for 2001-2002. A project planning committee consisting of representatives from the Texas Cooperative Extension, TRDC, and the Texas Department of Agriculture and Small Business Development Centers drafted the proposal entering Texas as a candidate for the program. NREI's mission is to strengthen rural America through entrepreneurship, to support learning that enables rural America to build a stronger and more supportive environment for entrepreneurship, and to create and support a national learning community around rural entrepreneurship. As part of the Discover State Policy Academy Program, coalition members will work with NREI to stimulate and support an expanded strategy for Texas by enhancing the environment for entrepreneurial development in rural areas.
Through a grant provided by the Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership, the Utah Rural Development Council (URDC) joined with the Southern Utah Forest Products Alliance (SUFPA) to sponsor and conduct networking workshops in a six-county area of the southern Utah's Four Corners region. Designed to promote the value of community forestry and cooperative marketing to the region's forestry employees and woodworkers, the open-house workshops are helping to build cross-regional networks among wood businesses and link these enterprises to local business resources. Such resources include county economic development directors, RC&D representatives, Workforce Services specialists, USU Extension Agents, and SBDC offices.
The First Annual Washington State Rural Development Council (WSRDC) Conference, "Rural Washington — The Future is in Our Hands" was held June 3-5, 2002 and featured Michael Wisdom of Colorado Rural Development Council (CRDC) as an invited presenter. This conference was designed to give small rural communities tools that would empower them and give them the opportunity to make progress. Mr. Wisdom explained in his presentation, “Nontraditional Fundraising,” that nontraditional methods encourage people to share their values and invest those values and themselves in local projects. This is a way to find dollars in your hometown, rather than chasing grants. Conference partners were: Satsop Public Development Authority, Trico Economic Development Council, Washington State University Extension, Washington State Rural Health Association, and Grant County Economic Development Council, and CRDC.
On June 10, 1999, the West Virginia Rural Development Council, with cooperation from USDA Rural Development, HUD, the WV Development Office, WVU Extension Service and the Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Council, convened the "EZ/EC Community Listening Forum". The Forum brought together 75 participants from applicant communities and federal and state government agencies to: a) share community experiences (e.g., successes, barriers) with the EZ/EC planning process, b) determine future plans, training and technical assistance needs of the communities in implementing their programs, and c) share resource and other technical assistance information. Interactive sessions were also held on workforce development, physical infrastructure, business development, and social and cultural infrastructure. A report on the Forum was prepared and distributed to all participating agencies and community leaders summarizing key issues, community technical assistance needs, and recommendations for state, federal and private sector organizations that work with rural communities. This forum was funded by the Appalachian Regional Council.
Wisconsin Rural Partners and its partners have compiled Profiles in Rural Community Life, Volume 1, a catalog of best practice models to help public- and private-sector agencies and organizations increase their access to good rural community development information. In March 1999, WRP convened its community models task group, made up of several public and private partners. The task group was charged with cataloging and disseminating best practice models for rural community use in agriculture, economic development, health, and other areas. WRP coordinated the flow of information between group members, sponsored teleconferences and other meetings, contacted potential funders, wrote grant proposals, designed and coordinated the publication of the journal, and helped advertise and distribute the publication. WRP's partners included local and economic development organizations and governments; University of Wisconsin Extension agents from several counties; the Wisconsin Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, and Trade and Consumer Protection; and the U.S. Small Business Administration.
