As the Rural Assembly looks back over 2022, our hearts are full of gratitude for the many friends, partners, and courageous community leaders who participated in helping us carry out our mission to build a more inclusive and just nation.
We talk with Kendra Pospychalla, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran with a decade of experience in disaster management. She specializes in designing disaster-related service programs and response plans. Kendra currently works for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) as the Director for Disaster Solutions, where she advises rural community and economic development organizations and local governments in their disaster-related efforts.
How to Engage Rural Employers in the Promise of Apprenticeship
Free Hill: Renewal and Rememory is both a virtual and place-based exhibition of The Rural Assembly. View online or learn how to see it in person.
Julie Rae Powers’ photographic and written work has focused on family history, coal, Appalachia, the queer “female” gaze, the butch body, and queer chosen families. They are the author and editor of the forthcoming Reclamation: Queering Appalachia’s Visual History and the memoir To Thine Own Self Be True, both out in 2024.
Apprenticeship presents a powerful strategy to connect jobseekers to family-supporting wages and career advancement opportunities. While there has been significant funding dedicated to the development of registered apprenticeships over the past several years, rural communities and especially rural young adults have largely not benefited.
Scott Keoni Shigeoka (they/he) is a nationally recognized creative leader and curiosity expert. He has worked with some of the most impactful and influential social movements, leaders, organizations, and celebrities in the past 15 years. Scott has deep roots in rural places; he is from a small town in Hawai‘i and now resides in another small town in the California Mojave Desert. Nhatt Nichols talks with Scott about his work and reframing who and what should be resilient.
New report details a ‘growing movement’ to censor books in schools — and issues a warning to take these organized efforts seriously.
Because of Helen Lewis, Whitney Kimball Coe was able to follow her calling to return home to East Tennessee, not just to build a life there but to lead, to serve, to celebrate all that we are and all we can be.
For the next week, The Rural Assembly is joining Welcoming America and partners across the country to celebrate Welcoming Week 2022.
Welcoming Week is an opportunity to celebrate the values that unite us as neighbors, parents, and colleagues, and to make our communities more welcoming to all those who call rural America home.
