Future Here Now: the Future of Rural

Selections

This week’s FHN has been focused on a particularly challenged — and often overlooked kind of place. And much of the story has been about activating and empowering the people of those places — people who have often been overlooked or discounted by outsiders — to make the kinds of change they need happen.

So to wrap up, I thought I would share with you a model process that we developed at Econogy and were starting to float to communities, many of them rural, before the pandemic hit. It’s an approach that I think has more potential than ever, and it’s especially designed for small towns and rural areas. Surveys indicate that students are significantly more likely to stay in a rural area if they have had hands-on experience in the community, and older folks become more open to new opportunities when they work with younger people in a collaborative environment.