Lisa Stifler is a Research Associate with the Community & Economic Development Program. For many rural communities, economic development efforts over the past couple of decades have often been focused on attracting and recruiting industries and big employers to their towns, counties, or regions. … Continued

Kendra Cotton is a Project Director with the Community-Campus Partnership Program. Conversations focused on revitalizing the Dillard School are heating up. Trip Stallings, a PhD candidate in UNC’s School of Education and former classroom teacher, joined the planning and fundraising efforts already u … Continued

Will Lambe is the Director of the Community-Campus Partnership and Associate Director for the Community & Economic Development Program. The Center for Rural Affairs has a newsletter series on “Sustaining Small Town Grocery Stores” (see here, here and here). The articles are short and sweet. Ther … Continued

A prior post mentions economic gardening.  Economic gardening is a grow from within approach to economic development, putting most of the focus on entrepreneurship instead of luring the big businesses to an area.  It is not a new strategy/approach, although it seems to be increasing in popularity in … Continued

One interesting program suggested to me was Threads for HOPE, a project in Salemburg, NC that stems from a public health program out of the Center for Health Promotion, Disease Prevention at the UNC School of Public Health.  Threads for HOPE adds an business development/entrepreneurship element to p … Continued