Photo by Coalfield Development.
Photo by City of Clarksburg.
Photo by Coalfield Development.
Bouncing Back
Photo by Generation
West Virginia/84 Agency.
Economic Resiliency in Appalachia
JEAN HARDIMAN
Editor’s Note: To view “Strengthening Economic Resilience in Appalachia” in its entirety, visit www.arc.gov.
Invest in education, technology, infra-
structure and broadband. Foster long-
term community engagement. Create
a community with a quality of life so
attractive people want to live there.
Spend time preparing leaders for the next
generation. These are just a few of the
best practices for economic resilience
that were discovered in a study recently
conducted by the Appalachian Regional
Commission (ARC).
In February, ARC released “Strengthen-
ing Economic Resilience in Appalachia,”
a report that highlights communities in
Appalachia and elsewhere that have proven
to be economically resilient in light of
downturns in traditional industries.
Among the 10 communities across the
country highlighted for their resilience was
Harrison County, WV, a community that
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
not only bounced back from a decline in
coal mining but lost very little—if any—
ground. The nine other communities
studied for this report faced a variety of
different struggles, from declines in timber
or manufacturing to significant economic
jarring caused by the 2008 recession.
The solutions that fueled their rebound
included identifying and growing assets,
building networks and collaboration, cul-
tivating entrepreneurship or combining
a variety of these efforts.
Researching Economic Resilience
The study was done as part of ARC’s
POWER Initiative. POWER, which stands
for Partnerships for Opportunity and
Workforce and Economic Revitalization,
aims to help areas suffering from coal
industry-related job losses by helping
them diversify their economies, according
to ARC Director Wendy Wasserman.
“ARC was particularly interested in
how communities demonstrate resilience
in the face of dramatic economic disrup-
tions,” she says. “This interest is also
reflective of ARC’s mission to innovate,
partner and invest to build community
capacity and strengthen economic growth
in Appalachia.”
Organizations like Downstream Strat-
egies, the Northeast Regional Center for
Rural Development and Dialogue + Design
Associates were contracted through a com-
petitive request for proposal process to
help conduct the research for the study.
“Their methodology included an analy-
sis of 35 statistical indicators to yield a
resilience score for each one of the Ap-
palachian region’s 420 counties,” says