Rural Learning Systems Don’t Need Saving
A new rural-led, capacity-building effort that actually respects communities
The conversation about rural America is too often negative. In an attempt to raise awareness of the challenges facing rural communities, dozens of reports have flooded the desks of policymakers and pages of newspapers, painting a bleak, deficit-focused picture.
That picture is wildly incomplete. Those of us who live in rural communities, and those of us who serve rural communities, know that each place is home to unique people, histories, and assets. We know that rural communities have collaboration and cooperation in their DNA, finding ways to use what they have to make what they need. That approach to solving community-wide problems extends beyond the physical — removing snow, patching roads, providing basic services — and stretches well into the sphere of solving complex social challenges.
We at CivicLab have experience in this. Based in the living laboratory of Columbus, IN, we’ve documented and shared the relationship-based, systems-building approach used in this rural region since the 1950s to solve complex social challenges. As practitioners ourselves, we see the assets our rural region has each day, and we have found ways of connecting these assets to accomplish things no one organization can do alone.
While our community is unique, it is not alone. Rural Talent Hubs and partnerships in the National Talent Network are using these same tools and processes to improve their communities. Partnerships like North State Together in rural northern California and RGV Focus in the Rio Grande Valley have been leading collaborative efforts to change education and workforce outcomes for years. A 2019 report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy demonstrates how these and other partnerships have developed home-grown strategies to help adults cross the graduation stage, make sure students of all ages have the technology they need to be successful, and connect people who earn high-quality credentials to jobs with a living wage.
It’s time for us to focus on that picture. The one that highlights the strengths and uniqueness of each rural community and embraces its complexity. The one that allows a community to chart its own future and pursue that vision with the resources and support it needs.
CivicLab, in partnership with Ascendium Education Group, has announced a new national effort to build and strengthen rural community learning systems. The initiative places the community and its partnership first, providing capacity-building support and funding to pursue its vision. Technical assistance provided through the effort is being delivered through a new empowerment model that breaks from the all-too-present format that forces communities to contort and diminish themselves to fit a prescribed model. Instead, the support communities receive will be directed by them, contextualized to their specific needs, and provided at the exact time support is needed through a group of experts and organizations in the Talent Hubs Technical Assistance Provider Network.
It is time to stop treating rural communities as if they are chasms of knowledge, skills, ability, and ambition. It is time to stop forcing support onto rural communities that, while perhaps well intentioned, subjugates capable people and organizations into the dehumanizing role of dunce.
Through this new initiative, we are eager to continue our efforts to partner with rural communities, to serve their visions for a stronger education and training system, and to elevate their unique assets and complexities that define the place they call home.
Dr. Colleen Pawlicki edited this post.
For more information, contact Dakota Pawlicki via email at dpawlicki@civiclab.org.
Dakota Pawlicki serves as Director of Talent Hubs at CivicLab. He and his colleagues support cross-sector partnerships around the country focused on improving the human condition. He also hosts Lumina Foundation’s podcast, Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Talent, is a keynote speaker at several national conferences, and is active in his own community in Indianapolis, IN. When not working, you can find Dakota on walks with his wife Dr. Colleen Pawlicki and dog Otis, playing the tuba, and riding his Honda Shadow (not at the same time).
