Charleston, WV (WOAY) – Community leaders from across West Virginia gathered in Charleston on Wednesday for a statewide effort to connect towns that need funding with the people who have it.
The gathering, called the Impact Forum, was hosted by the West Virginia Community Development Hub. The idea was to put the people with projects in the same room as the people with funding.
“We’ve invited community members from all across the state who have been working on an economic development plan and projects,” said Heather Foster, executive director of the West Virginia Community Development Hub. “And then we’ve also invited resource providers … they are investment sources so that we can connect the people of West Virginia who have great ideas with the resources to finance them and improve their communities.”
Those funders included federal partners like USDA Rural Development, which helped anchor the event.
“In rural development, we usually say that we can build a community from the ground up,” said Kayleigh Kyle, senior community liaison with USDA. “We’ve got programs that offer housing assistance for people who are buying homes for the first time. We offer community programs that can do things like infrastructure and high speed internet development. And then we also offer business support for businesses within the communities.”
For the people doing the work in West Virginia’s communities, a day like this is about finding the support to keep going. Peter Corum runs a social enterprise out of Kimball, in McDowell County, aimed at keeping West Virginians from leaving.
“SEE Appalachia is a social enterprise, a for profit company that has a mission, and our mission is to address population decline in West Virginia specifically and the greater Appalachian region,” Corum said.
Even with the New River Gorge National Park drawing millions of visitors, Corum said the state still struggles to hold onto the people who live here.
“West Virginia is a state of opportunity,” he said. “If everybody’s like, hey, we’re having economic difficulties, but with problems come opportunities, and we are a state of opportunity right now.”
According to Foster, the Hub’s work produces results. She pointed to a community team in Logan that spent two years developing a medical student housing plan that has now secured federal funding to build.
“That was a project that was really designed by the community, envisioned by the leaders there, and supported by the Development Hub, our brownfields partners and other partners,” Foster said.
For Corum, the value of the day came down to the connections themselves.
“You come to people with groups like this and working with them and you get re-energized,” he said. “It’s exciting.”
