Ten partnerships have been selected by CivicLab to participate in a
three-year incubator to rethink and revitalize their communities by
strengthening rural higher education and employment systems.
Communities participating in this effort are from states across the
country, including Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Montana,
North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina.
Supported by Ascendium Education Group and ECMC Foundation, the
$2.6M grant initiative provides training, technical assistance, and
direct financial support for system-level strategies that create
stronger education-to-employment pathways aligned to future
economies.
After a national call for proposals, ten rural partnerships were
selected through a rigorous review process. The communities
selected showed a readiness to focus on rural redevelopment in
order to strengthen the communities they call home for the
future.
Each partnership includes higher education institutions,
nonprofit organizations, employers, public agencies, economic
development agencies, and other local stakeholders that work
together to improve education and workforce outcomes. To be
selected, partnerships were required to submit prior work and
future plans that demonstrate the community’s readiness to achieve
systems change.
“We were fortunate to receive many strong applications from
interested communities,” said Amber Fischvogt, director at
CivicLab. “The ten that were selected brought together the
necessary partners in their community and demonstrated their
readiness for a new type of conversation about rural talent
development and systems building.”
The rural partnerships selected for the initiative include:
Berkeley Chamber Rural Initiative –
Berkeley County, S.C.Convening Organization: Berkeley Chamber
Educational OutreachFocus: Berkeley, Charleston, & Dorchester
Counties
Community Education Coalition –
Bartholomew County, Ind.Convening Organization: Columbus Learning
Center Management CorporationFocus: 8-county region in south
central Indiana
Expect More Tehama – Tehama County,
Calif.Convening Organization: Expect More TehamaFocus: Tehama
County
FutureMakers Coalition at
Collaboratory – Southwest Florida, Fla.Convening Organization:
CollaboratoryFocus: Hendry and Glades Counties
IMPACT Independence – Independence
County, Ark.Convening Organization: IMPACT Independence Focus:
Independence County
John Jay WorkReady Institute – Jay
County, Ind.Convening Organization: John Jay Center for
LearningFocus: Jay County
Our Future in UNiSON – Anston &
Union Counties, N.C.Convening Organization: Wingate
UniversityFocus: Anston & Union Counties
Southeast Ohio Career System Builders
– Southeast Ohio, OhioConvening Organization: Building Bridges to
Careers, Inc.Focus: 25-county region in southeast Ohio
Tuscarawas Valley Industry Sector
Partnership – Tuscarawas County, OhioConvening Organization:
Tuscarawas County Economic Development CorporationFocus: Tuscarawas
County
Western Montana Care Workforce
Collaborative – Western & Central Montana, Mont.Convening
Organization: University of MontanaFocus: Western & Central
Montana
The initiative launched in July 2024 with teams from each
partnership attending a three-day institute focused on stakeholder
engagement and system building tools. A total of six institutes
will be provided over the three-year period. The cohort will
continue to meet virtually every other month to share ideas,
resources, and receive technical assistance.
Participating communities will also receive new data sets and
methodologies to support a novel approach to economic development.
CivicLab will provide its spatial diversity census books and new
methods of qualitative data collection and analysis to each
community, supplementing their existing use of labor market
data.
“Communities have historically relied solely on labor market
projections when making economic and talent development decisions,”
explained Dakota Pawlicki, director of Talent Hubs at CivicLab. “By
bringing new data sets rooted in place and people, we are equipping
rural communities with a comprehensive and home-grown approach to
community vitality.”
Each partnership will co-create a workplan that builds upon
their existing efforts and implement strategies towards their
unique goals. These plans go beyond organizational strategic plans,
focusing entirely on what a community can achieve only by working
together.
About Ascendium Education Group: Ascendium
Education Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to
helping people reach the education and career goals that matter to
them. Ascendium invests in initiatives designed to increase the
number of students from low-income backgrounds who complete
postsecondary degrees, certificates and workforce training
programs, with an emphasis on first-generation students,
incarcerated adults, rural community members, students of color and
veterans. Ascendium's work identifies, validates and expands best
practices to promote large-scale change at the institutional,
system and state levels, with the intention of elevating
opportunity for all. For more information,
visit https://www.ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
About CivicLab: CivicLab, (a program of the
Community Education Coalition) is a nonprofit institute dedicated
to advancing the practice of civic collaboration and leading
complex social systems. CivicLab’s approach is to: 1) learn what
makes community collaboration work at its best, 2) document the
discoveries, and 3) teach and share the practices broadly. The
purpose of the work is to help communities increase their
collective capacity—which is their ability to get things done,
together. Since its inception, CivicLab has partnered with over 300
communities and organizations across the U.S. and trained more than
14,000 leaders of foundations, educational institutions,
government, corporations, and community development
organizations.
CivicLab is the home of Talent Hubs and the National Talent
Network. The Talent Hub designation signifies that a local or
regional cross-sector partnership has met rigorous standards for
creating environments that attract, retain, and cultivate talent,
particularly among today’s students, many of whom are people
of color, the first in their families to go to college, and from
low-income households. The designation serves both as an
aspirational target for other cities to aim for and a platform from
which cities designated as Talent Hubs can build. The National
Talent Network is a group of nearly 100 cross-sector partnerships
working collaboratively to connect learning to economic opportunity
in the places they call home.
About ECMC Foundation: ECMC Foundation is a
national foundation whose North Star goal is to eliminate equity
gaps in postsecondary completion by 2040 so that underserved
learners have greater opportunity for social and economic mobility.
The Foundation’s mission is to improve higher education for career
success among underserved populations through evidence-based
innovation. ECMC Foundation makes strategic grants and
program-related investments to support both nonprofit and
for-profit ventures, guided by a strategic framework which aims to
advance systemic change by removing barriers to postsecondary
completion; building the capacity of organizations, institutions,
and systems; and transforming the postsecondary ecosystem. Learn
more about ECMC Foundation by
visiting www.ecmcfoundation.org and our parent company,
ECMC Group, by visiting www.ecmcgroup.org.
Media Contact:Dakota
Pawlicki CivicLab 815-245-3222dpawlicki@civiclab.org
For more information, visit
https://www.rurallearningsystems.org.