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Rural Community Development and Capacity Building: Rural communities are undergoing dramatic changes as natural resource and agriculture dependent economies and lifeways give way to tourism and service-based economies. These changes have impacts like changing demographics, lack of affordable housing, worker displacement and loss of family jobs, insufficient access to healthcare, and declining school enrollments. The Sierra Institute works to understand these changes and their effects on rural communities, and build the capacity of communities to respond proactively.
Examples of our work to understand and advance sustainable rural community development include:
- A participatory assessment and capacity building project to improve health and healthcare access for a growing Latino immigrant population
- An assessment of the impacts of land fallowing on farm communities and farmworkers in southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District
- A study of Tribal economic development in the Pacific Northwest for the Intertribal Timber Council
- Assessments of socioeconomic health and community capacity in areas where natural resource management and economies are changing, such as the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project and the Klamath Region Assessment
- Evaluation of the Clinton Administration’s $1.2 billion Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, designed to help timber-dependent communities transition to new economies
- An assessment of effects of the flood-induced closure of Yosemite National Park on nearby communities
- A survey of residents of Westwood, a small, timber-based community, on their views and hopes for the future of their community
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