This National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices guide offers concrete policies and recommendations to create and enhance workforce systems to better prepare workers for future employment opportunities. The report focuses on three key…

This Upjohn Institute study is an interim first-year report of the Institute’s “Promise: Investing in Community” initiative. The report presents strategies that rural areas as well as small and mid-sized cities might deploy to create shared…

The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) has recently released a report which examines relationships between indicators of economic opportunity and the prevalence of prescription opioids and substance use in the…

This brief from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy discusses demographics in Southwestern Minnesota, a rural area where the population is aging and becoming more diverse, particularly among youth. The goal of the brief…

This resource is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service and is an update of the annual series on rural America. Researchers provide the state of rural areas with a focus on the effect of the recession on rural families…

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted the Rural Communities Initiative Implementing Strategies for Employer Engagement Workshop in Louisville, Kentucky January 28-29, 2010. Six rural communities, as a component of ongoing technical…

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted a Rural Communities Initiative Economic Development Roundtable in Spring 2009 to strengthen economic development activities among programs serving TANF participants in rural communities. Nine rural…

The Placing Individuals in Vital Opportunity Training (PIVOT) Program was designed by the Erie County Department of Social Services to bridge the gap between the recipients and the local business community and TANF. This program provides quality…

This resource is from the Rural Poverty Research Institute, and highlights the effect of the economic climate on rural areas. The rural economy is losing jobs at a faster rate than the rest of the nation, and employment data from the Bureau of…

As part of the Rural Communiities Initiative, Washington County, Maine conducted a Soft Skills and Employability Site Exchange.