To Improve Health Equity, Rural America Must be Part of the Frame

What does it take to build fair opportunities for health in rural communities? Rural Assembly coordinator Whitney Kimball Coe shares firsthand insights, as well as a new funding opportunity aimed to help build on existing lessons.

" My hometown is a proving ground for leadership and imagination. We may not have a gig of broadband, but we know how to assemble a community potluck on the fly. We know the ins and outs of local systems and relationships, and we’re pretty good at negotiating them. We’re used to living, working, and worshipping alongside folks with whom we agree and disagree, and this gives us a head start when it comes to bridging divides and joining forces in ways that improve health, equity and opportunity.   " - Whitney Kimball Coe
Helping Shape The Rural Squad
In last week's newsletter we introduced The Rural Squad program that connects leaders to each other, helps urban-based institutions engage with rural communities effectively, and offers the country a reliable network of rural problem solvers. We also asked you to help inform the design of the program by responding to the following question:

"How could a national rural leaders program best support the work you're doing in rural America?"

Here are just a few of your responses:

"Provide a better network for collaboration and sharing resources, and training how to better advocate for rural issues"

"Share innovating ideas and out of the box solutions"

"We don't just want funding: we want help in restructuring economies to meet now and future needs. Policy solutions. A sustainable- SELF-sustainable- solution."

"Providing a common place, a network, that helps to locate resources: knowledge, funding, policy changers, innovative ideas."

"It could help by providing guidance for actions, activities, hurdles, challenges that we all face no matter how small or big our rural communities are currently."

We are working on incorporating these ideas as we continue to design and create The Rural Squad. Stay tuned for more!
Join The Aspen Institute's Community Strategies Group for upcoming webinar: " Rural Development Hubs: Action Infrastructure for Rural Prosperity "

Tue May 14, 2019
10:00am - 11:30am


Join Aspen Institute President Dan Porterfield on May 14th to hear from four Hub leaders, all members of the Rural Development Innovation Group, as they share what it takes to be a Hub – and why and how they do it.

We’ll also discuss policy levers to support Rural Development Hubs and preview some of the topline findings from the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group’s interviews with more than 40 of these field-leading organizations building better rural outcomes across America.
It's National Poetry Month! Please enjoy this selection from North Carolina Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green .

We look forward to hosting Jaki at the Rural Women's Summit in Greenville, SC, October 27-29, 2019.
who will be the messenger of this land

by Jaki Shelton Green
who will be the messenger of this land
count its veins
speak through the veins
translate the language of water
navigate the heels of lineage
who will carry this land in parcels
paper, linen, burlap
who will weep when it bleeds
and hardens
forgets to birth itself

who will be the messenger of this land
wrapping its stories carefully
in patois of creole, irish,
gullah, twe, tuscarora
stripping its trees for tea
and pleasure
who will help this land to
remember its birthdays, baptisms
weddings, funerals, its rituals
denials, disappointments,
and sacrifices

who will be the messengers
of this land
harvesting its truths
bearing unleavened bread
burying mutilated crops beneath
its breasts

who will remember
to unbury the unborn seeds
that arrived
in captivity
shackled, folded,
bent, layered in its
bowels

we are their messengers
with singing hoes
and dancing plows
with fingers that snap
beans, arms that
raise corn, feet that
cover the dew falling from
okra, beans, tomatoes

we are these messengers
whose ears alone choose
which spices
whose eyes alone name
basil, nutmeg, fennel, ginger,
cardamom, sassafras
whose tongues alone carry
hemlock, blood root, valerian,
damiana, st. john's wort
these roots that contain
its pleasures its languages its secrets

we are the messengers
new messengers
arriving as mutations of ourselves
we are these messengers
blue breath
red hands
singing a tree into dance
Julie and Phil Henneman, who lost their son Keith to suicide in 2006, when he was 29, talk about the experience outside the old farmhouse in Boscobel, Wisconsin. The devastating Midwest floods this spring increased concerns about the mental health and well-being of farmers who already were struggling with yearslong economic uncertainty. (Photo by Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)
Farmers Wash Up 'In a Fragile Place' After Historic Midwest Floods

Experts say the mental-health needs of farm families will increase because of devastation from this spring's flooding. State and local groups gear up while the U.S. Department of Agriculture has yet to start the mental-health program included in the 2018 farm bill.
Ioby is Hiring!

Ioby , a crowdfunding platform, is hiring eight part time, short term fellows to help the organization understand the social, economic, and physical landscapes to the South. Ioby "is a community of donors, volunteers, and leaders creating, funding, and implementing neighborhood projects that aim to make their neighborhoods stronger, more just, and more sustainable." They are looking for one fellow to scan the civic landscapes of each of the following eight regions:

  1. Central Appalachia
  2. Carolina
  3. Central Black Belt
  4. Eastern Gulf Region
  5. Western Gulf Region
  6. Border Region
  7. Mississippi Delta
  8. Northwest Arkansas

Please share with anyone who may be interested! The deadline to apply is May 31st.
Remember to check out the full "All Things Rural" calendar of events here and submit your events to be featured on the calendar here !