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The RARE AmeriCorps Program is a firm believer in the power of partnerships. We deeply value the reciprocity and support provided by each of our statewide partners. We strive to create catalytic change across rural Oregon, and our generous partners ensure we have the tools and resources to make that happen. One such partner is The Ford Family Foundation, who is committed to offering financial support to help offset the cost of hosting a RARE AmeriCorps member.

The Ford Family Foundation prides itself on empowering Oregonians to become catalysts of change and stalwarts of sustainability outside of the state’s urban strongholds. The organization’s ideology is simple, yet dynamic: “We believe in the power of rural communities. Communities create the conditions that allow children and families to thrive. Communities are the backbone of our democracy. We believe that a community works best when it works for all its members, especially for those who are disadvantaged or excluded due to poverty, race/ethnicity, and geography. Our investments provide rural communities with the tools and capacities they need to build a vital future for themselves – a future where every resident can thrive.”

Without The Ford Family Foundation’s support, many local government departments, NGOs, and economic development entities across the state would not be positioned to partner with the RARE AC Program. Please visit the Funding Opportunities section of our website to learn out more about the financial support available via The Ford Family Foundation.

By Annissa Anderson / The Roundhouse Foundation, The Daily Yonder

Learning how to work together as a community in the face of changing climate, resources and economies has been the focus of Lake County Resources Initiative (LCRI) since its inception. The economy of Lake County, located in south-central Oregon, was long driven by agriculture and forestry. After a decline in lumber production and subsequent loss of jobs in the late 1990s, county leaders such as LCRI founder Jim Walls began to look for ways to create a more sustainable economy and future.

Walls created the nonprofit in 2002 to promote local workforce training and sustainable forest management. Today, its mission is to demonstrate an economic, ecological and sustainable approach to natural resource management, climate disruption solutions, youth and community education, and increased economic development in the pursuit of continual improvement of the quality of life for present and future generations.

One of LCRI’s first collaborations was with the Lakeview Stewardship Group, formed in 1998 to redefine land management goals in Lake County’s Fremont-Winema National Forest, incorporating ecological restoration and community values.

“This is a role we still play today,” said Nick Johnson, executive director of LCRI. The area’s forest and land health–and more recently, ways to mitigate forest fire danger–are all approached on a restoration scale by the stewardship group that includes conservationists, timber workers, local government officials, and other civic leaders.

The other focus for Lake County Resources Initiative is its energy programs. LCRI provides information and resources on energy efficiency and renewable energy options to residents, businesses, and community organizations to strengthen the local economy and work toward a zero-emissions goal for the county.

“Solar and geothermal are the two most readily available renewable resources right now,” said Johnson. While tapping into the county’s geothermal energy is mostly in the planning phase, LCRI has helped to implement utility-scale and rooftop solar projects throughout the county. With the help of local governments and businesses in the area, a variety of solar arrays aim to create community resilience in the face of increasing climate change.

Johnson believes LCRI’s work to help Lake County move away from an extraction economy and into one that uses sustainable technologies and practices could be a model for other counties. Its role as an intermediary between land developers and the county facilitates the community’s ability to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

The Roundhouse Foundation in Sisters first learned about LCRI after watching the 2020 documentary “Other Side of the Hill,” about how and why these collaborations in rural Oregon worked. Erin Borla, trustee and executive director of The Roundhouse Foundation, was so impressed with what LCRI and their partners had accomplished to innovatively support the economy of rural Lake County that her staff reached out to learn more.

“After getting to know Nick and the small-but-mighty LCRI team, it was clear that they are doing great things with a very small staff. Offering support to help leverage additional funding so they could hire an office administrator was what made sense to our team,” said Borla.

That support made a difference for LCRI. “Thanks to Roundhouse, we hired one new, full-time employee supporting energy programs and administrative work so we can now serve our constituency better,” said Johnson. “It’s another huge step forward, and we’re very thankful to them for that,” he said.

Another way that LCRI acts to increase the county’s energy efficiency is as a community partner of Energy Trust of Oregon. Facilitating energy efficiency projects through Energy Trust helps both residential and commercial customers save money on upfront costs.

Johnathan Van Roekel, the renewable energy coordinator for LCRI, said LCRI’s role with Energy Trust is in helping homeowners and small businesses navigate the industry to capture available funds for projects like weatherization, HVAC and solar energy arrays.

“We help homeowners get their attics insulated for zero dollars,” said Van Roekel, whose position is made possible through the University of Oregon RARE (Resource Assistance for Rural Environments) AmeriCorps program. The RARE program aims to increase the capacity of rural communities to improve their economic, social and environmental conditions, through the assistance of trained graduate-level members who live and work in communities for 11 months. Van Roekel in his second 11-month term.

“The way RARE and LCRI have come into a partnership to host my position is through a USDA program known as Renewable Energy Development Assistance (REDA),” said Van Roekel. The REDA team, which consists of many statewide project partners such as Wy’East RC&D, Sustainable Northwest, Wallowa Resources, the Oregon Department of Energy, and Energy Trust of Oregon, enables LCRI to work with small businesses and agricultural producers on a statewide scale.

Van Roekel said his greatest success during his time at LCRI has been helping in the effort to raise more than $400,000 in USDA REAP (Rural Energy for America Program) grants that have gone to help people with costs for implementing renewable energy projects statewide. “It is through the REDA effort that I have helped write requests for the REAP grant applications,” said Van Roekel.

“When we are helping leverage money that needs to be spent in the community, we are helping to establish how this money is distributed statewide,” said Van Roekel. “I am inspired to think that we can make this more accessible for people.”

Annissa Anderson writes for The Roundhouse Foundation, a private, family foundation, based in Sisters, Oregon, since 2002. The Foundation believes that solutions to the unique challenges of rural communities can be found through creative thinking and problem-solving, innovation, and collaboration. We partner with community organizations to develop, implement and sustain creative, place-based approaches and programs designed to strengthen and celebrate rural Oregon and beyond.  The foundation provides grant services to rural communities and tribal regions throughout Oregon and operates Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture in Sisters. 

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

By the US Economic Development Administration, eda.gov

Whether it’s developing a business incubator, building new broadband infrastructure, or expanding a wastewater management system, economic development is often a heavy-lifting activity. Sometimes, though, no challenge is as great as bridging the divide between academia and practice. At the University of Oregon, the Institute for Policy Research and Engagement (IPRE) is helping Oregon’s economic development community remove the barriers that separate research from action.

Home to an Economic Development Administration (EDA) designated University Center (UC), IPRE lends the expertise of the University of Oregon (UO) to economic development practitioners in the Pacific Northwest, helping them integrate best practices and emerging research into innovative solutions to regional economic issues. Its past successes include an expansive study on the economic impacts of the 2017 solar eclipse that is helping communities prepare for future events, and the award-winning Disaster Planning for Heritage Resources guidebook.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in 2020, however, IPRE faced its biggest challenge yet. Faculty and staff sprang into action, mobilizing resources to provide strategic guidance on resilience and recovery to Oregon’s policymakers and business leaders.

“In June of 2020, we put out a white paper on a framework for economic recovery from the pandemic,” recalls Bob Parker, recently retired as Executive Director of IPRE and now serving as its Director of Strategy and Technical Solutions. Presciently, the white paper identified widespread testing as a key component in securing the state’s successful emergence from the pandemic and laid out the position that the expense of action would be outweighed by the cost of inaction in terms of jobs lost. “Obviously we didn’t know at that point that the federal government would have the response that they did.”

An October 2021 study by researchers at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy validated the strategic jumpstart IPRE offered Oregon policymakers, finding that Oregon was among seven states with the strongest pandemic-era job growth relative to February 2020 employment levels.

In 2021, EDA awarded additional funding to UO through a CARES Act grant to support expanded pandemic recovery work. Those resources, in combination with support from the Ford Family Foundation, allowed IPRE to grow its successful Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) program. RARE embeds AmeriCorps Volunteers into Economic Development Districts (EDD), helping expand the geographic reach of the university’s expertise well beyond UO’s Eugene campus.

RARE’s AmeriCorps staff underwent IPRE-administered training in economic development principles and, once deployed, helped rural EDDs put those principles into practice. During the pandemic, they assisted EDDs in completing complex COVID-19 needs assessments, helped businesses source funding for renewable energy infrastructure, and even collaborated with farmers to facilitate the launch of a new local food brand, Klamath Grown.

The RARE expansion was just one of several tactics activated by IPRE to help Oregon recover and rebuild from the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. It also collaborated with social impact consultancy X4 Health to launch Community ROCKit, a COVID-19 recovery planning tool; it undertook a series of state-wide attitudinal surveys to support business leaders and policymakers preparing for the post-pandemic economy; and it participated as a key component of the university’s Community Recovery Branch, which served as an interlocutor between UO and local government on pandemic issues.

“I think it’s one of the most unique things that the federal government does,” Parker explains, in reference to EDA’s University Center program. “It allows us to work with communities in a way that moves the discipline of economic development forward. That partnership of bringing the capacity of higher education into practice is so important.”

EDA’s UC program enables institutions of higher education to establish and operate University Centers focused on leveraging institutional assets to build regional economic ecosystems that support innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship, resiliency, and exclusiveness.

Learn more about the UC program at eda.gov.