New STAFF + New PARTNERS +
SPOTLIGHT ON OLD FRIENDS
Mary Sketch: First Day on the Job

 I spent my first few hours on the job as the new Program Associate for the Center for Rural Strategies hiking up a slope in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico.

Struggling to catch my breath 8,000 feet above sea level, I kept pace with twenty other rural leaders from around the country, who an hour earlier were more or less complete strangers.

Welcome to Mary Sketch, our new program associate with Center for Rural Strategies & the Rural Assembly!
Rural Assembly Announces Grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Center for Rural Strategies is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to build rural leadership and to connect local and national groups in ways that improve well-being in rural America.
2019 Rural Generation Summit: Registration opens TOMORROW
The Rural Assembly is excited to partner with old friends to bring you the 2019 Rural Generation Summit, May 22-24, in the Mississippi Delta.

This summit presents a historic opportunity to share the practices, projects, institutions, and funding priorities that build equity for communities that have been historically disadvantaged with local folks, national practitioners, and state and federal policy makers.
Long-time Rural Assembly partner and "bridge-builder" Anna Claussen profiled in the Daily Yonder

"Anna Claussen writes thank-you notes. She presents thoughtful gifts to colleagues when she visits from out of town. She’s polite – Minnesota polite. 
So she’s not the sort of person you expect to lead folks into potentially uncomfortable conversations about contentious topics. But that’s exactly what she does with the Rural Climate Dialogues."