OCRA launches Rural Empowerment and Development program
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The Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs has launched a new capacity-building and planning initiative designed to help rural Indiana communities plan and implement projects to spur economic growth.
The Rural Empowerment and Development program, or RED, was created in partnership with the Indiana Communities Institute at Ball State University.
OCRA Executive Director Duke Bennett says the goal of the program is to help communities improve their collaboration and work together to find ways to improve their quality of life.
Bennett told Inside INdiana Business that it became obvious over time that many communities have struggled with coming together to develop actionable projects.
“It’s become more apparent that you have to work regionally with, sometimes, regions within your own county and beyond,” Bennett said. “There’s effort going on, but we see that there’s a lack of help to facilitate these meetings, strategic planning sessions. The whole goal is to help people work together so they can accomplish their local projects, and a lot of times we find people work in silos a little bit too much.”
The program will start with a minimum of three communities, Bennett said, with each team participating in a four-to-six-month program tailored to their specific needs by the Indiana Communities Institute.
Throughout the process, the communities will develop and refine a vision and community engagement plan. The Indiana Communities Institute will analyze data about the areas, review existing plans, and take steps to identify issues, opportunities, and solutions, OCRA said.
“Ball State will guide them through that process over roughly the course of a year,” Bennett said. “It’ll be multiple meetings, multiple engagement sessions, helping them to drive a really good strategic plan for that area, that community, that team, to begin to take advantage of some of the funding opportunities around the state to get their projects done.”
To be eligible for the programs, local teams should be led by either a countywide not-for-profit or county government and should include two or more incorporated local units of government within the county boundary.
Bennett said the RED program will be complementary to the agency’s existing programs like Stellar Pathways or PreservINg Main Street.
“We believe that [communities will] start doing more strategic planning and go through this process, develop, make sure they have an updated comprehensive plan for the community, make sure that they’ve done individual plans for these projects,” he said. “They check all the boxes that are needed for a lot of the grant funding sources out there. So it kind of moves them along in a more formal way than kind of the way it works now.”
OCRA said any municipality included must have a population under 50,000, and applicants must not already be involved in the Stellar Pathways or PreservINg Main Street programs.
“This exciting partnership between OCRA and Ball State University will provide another opportunity for Hoosier communities to improve their quality of life,” Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch said in a news release. “Collaboration is key to any successful community development project, and that is a priority of the RED program. I look forward to seeing how local units of government can connect with one another to benefit their county as a whole.”
Applications for the RED program are open through Oct. 30. You can learn more about the program by clicking here.