By Madeline Matson
Rural Assembly Executive Director
You never know when old skills will come in handy. A month into my new job, I found myself not in my office, but in my kitchen, baking a pie. My past as a baker and former bakery owner came into play as we began to think about the theme for Rural Assembly Everywhere 2025. We’re living in a moment when resources – not just funding but even the hope to continue this work — seem to be shrinking. Our team began to wonder: In a time of scarcity, are we all out to get our share of a diminishing pie? Or could we imagine a way to cultivate abundance, even if it seems out of reach?
A Bigger Pie: Cultivating Abundance in a Time of Scarcity
And so, I found myself baking a pie to illustrate our Everywhere 2025 theme —A Bigger Pie: Cultivating Abundance in a Time of Scarcity. We invite you to explore that idea with us and other rural leaders at our annual virtual gathering on Sept. 17th.
Everywhere 2025 will provide a platform where rural people can share skills, knowledge, and motivations to increase awareness of rural issues. We gather in hopes of empowering rural people to act and participate in the betterment of their local communities. Everywhere is a front porch for rural people and places; it works to connect us in time and in shared hope for the future.
Some may wonder if shared hope is realistic. There is no denying that many of us are currently living under the shadow of scarcity. Organizations and communities face potential and real cuts to a wide range of services that millions of Americans rely on, especially in rural communities.
Even still, we argue that it is critically important to push back against a zero-sum game mindset: the idea that if you win, I lose. Because existing and making decisions in this way has been shown time and again to lead to larger losses rather than gains.
Training ourselves to think in this way is challenging when we are surrounded by cultural messages to the contrary. For people in rural communities, scarcity mindset is a common way of life, because resources are often limited. Scarcity is real, but how can abundant thinking lead to other gains? There is ingenuity inherent in this way of thinking, and there is also something fundamental that can be replicated: the win/win scenario attitude.
During Everywhere 2025, we hope to highlight stories that push past the scarcity mindset and provide tools and resources that will help rural people continue and improve their work in unprecedented times. And maybe we’ll even get to share a piece of pie together.
Have you encountered zero-sum thinking in your community? How does it show up? Send us an email and let us know.
Rural Assembly Director Madeline Matson (she/her) was raised on the Long Beach Peninsula where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean, about 15 minutes from the place she now calls home.
