Rebuilding the Appalachian Economy from the Ground Up

[Music]

how can

appalachia’s economy rise up

we in appalachia we have a lot of grit

resilience

it’s of necessity despite generations of

high poverty and a tough economy we

figure out

solutions to problems we take what we

have

we put it together creatively we figure

it out

it doesn’t always look like a neat clean

product that you might find on the shelf

of a suburban big box store but we

figure it out

so how can we tap these strengths to

rebuild our economy answering this

question is more important than ever

before

the world is shifting to cleaner forms

of energy

and our coal economy which we’re so

proud of

continues to rapidly decline so it’s

critical we figure out the answer to

this question how do we

rebuild our economy i believe i have an

answer

and it’s a very simple answer but it’s

one of those things that’s

easier said than done new businesses

we need new appalachian businesses we

need thousands of them

and we need these new businesses to

ethically

employ and empower the people in our

communities who are most in need

of these opportunities during college

i was a youth director at a presbyterian

church and we would do service trips

mission trips

all over um met some of the most

inspiring people

on native american reservations in inner

city soup kitchens

worked side by side with laborers

immigrant laborers in apple orchards

even got to travel overseas and i was so

inspired by the creativity and the

resilience

of people that i met but everywhere i

went i felt in the back of my mind

that i belonged back home that i could

have the biggest

impact back home because that was where

i belonged

growing up here in west virginia i knew

there was tremendous need but i also

knew there was incredible opportunity

i knew we had more to offer than what

we’ve been able to offer so far

even though some had written us off as

rednecks or hillbillies

i i knew that we had more to offer our

country and our world

the very last service trip that i led

was to williamson west virginia and

mingo county deep in cold country

and we were doing traditional home

repair

a wheelchair ramp some light roof repair

some indoor light maintenance and as we

worked these two young men

approached us and i remember this very

vividly still it was very hot july day

so they had their shirts off they were

smoking cigarettes

but they had tool belts slung over their

shoulders

and they asked if we had work available

and i explained we were volunteers and

they went on their way and it could not

have been more than a two-minute

interaction

but those two minutes that minor moment

really stayed with me

and and nodded me and bothered me and

haunted me

and started to make me feel angry

because i felt like it summed up the

situation

of our economy which has become so

distressed in our communities which have

become so depressed that

even when two young men have the

gumption to want to work to want to

learn

there’s nowhere for that gumption to be

applied because of the economics

that we’re up against so this moment

planted a seed of conviction

within me lots of people talk about the

unemployment rate

and that’s an important statistic

certainly

but the statistic that really keeps me

up at night is something called the

labor force

participation rate it’s the percentage

of working age adults who are active in

the workforce so

the unemployment rate doesn’t even count

people who have given up entirely trying

to get back in the workforce

and west virginia has had one of the

lowest labor force participation rates

for decades at barely above 50 percent

the top line’s the national average

the bottom line is our state’s average

barely 50 percent of working age adults

active in the workforce what do we do

about this

how can we create real opportunity for

those two young men who

tool belts slung over their shoulders a

common answer is retraining

those boys can get trained right

certainly on tv if a mine is going to

close or a factory is going to close

the experts say don’t worry there’s

retraining programs

the reality is a lot of these programs

just don’t work how they’re supposed to

work

appalachia’s had an abundance of

publicly funded job training programs

but the training doesn’t matter if it

doesn’t lead to an actual job

and what about the communities where

there just are not a lot of good paying

jobs

in the first place so that’s the bad

news

our economy has had a couple of tough

years

followed by more tough years i think our

substance use

crisis is directly linked to our

economic crisis

but the good news is that in the huge

economic void left

by the coal industry which has created a

lot of pain

but it’s also created new space for new

green spurts of innovation

to start spurting up appalachian

entrepreneurs

are rising up to create the jobs that we

desperately need

my friend dan started the first solar

company in the southern part of west

virginia it started out of an old ice

cream truck

and now employs more than 40 people good

paying union union jobs

my friend ben started a local

agriculture company started it on a

former mine land

a former mountaintop removal site that

most people said would never be a viable

part of the ecosystem again

and now more than 100 farmers

participate in a statewide cooperative

my friend claudette helped start a real

estate company and the portfolio was

made up almost entirely of old empty

buildings

that most people said you’re gonna have

to tear those buildings down and now

those buildings are places for new

businesses

and hubs for opportunity i could tell

you of hundreds more

appalachian entrepreneurs rising up

what’s really unique about these

enterprises

is that they’re hiring people who face

significant barriers to employment

so the point of the company is to create

opportunities for people who need it

most with

substance use disorder folks who have

been on public assistance or

former coal miners many of these folks

are working what we call the 33 6-3

model

this is something my organization

innovated

and it’s designed not only to create

jobs but really to create a

transformational

opportunity so 33 hours of each week

there’s paid work so it’s a real job

that’s paid which is crucial

six hours a week our participants are in

higher education

going to college working on degrees and

vocational programs and three hours a

week

we’re doing personal development so the

main hook

is the job but really the job is just

where it starts because we

try to earn people’s trust to go deep

and to really think about what a full

life means for each of us and how we can

go have it

so it’s not just about getting trained

for a job it’s about having a full life

and

finding a calling it’s about realizing

our full potential power and purpose as

people

we helped start a wood working company

in lincoln county west virginia and

megan was a local resident who was

interested in working with us

but she wasn’t quite sure she could

trust us we have

generations of broken promises in

appalachia that

make us a little skeptical sometimes so

complicating matters further megan had

just gotten a medical opinion

that said she could go on public

assistance basically for the rest of her

life through a program called ssi

now a lot of people have real issues and

need public assistance there is no shame

in that whatsoever

so that’s not the point that i’m making

but megan had skills she had a great

attitude

she was a talented young person and i

didn’t want her to become yet another

young west virginian to exit the

workforce and become part of that labor

force

participation statistic that keeps me up

at night

so we asked megan how long is the

medical opinion good for

she said 30 days we said all right give

us 30 days

try 33 6 and 3 try it out in the

woodshop for 30 days and let’s see where

we’re at

i will never forget day 30. megan came

in to work early

she put on her ppe she fired up the

table saw

she took the letter from the doctor put

it on a piece of plywood

and ran it straight through the blade

several different directions

and threw it in the trash can and she

said i’m not defined by that piece of

paper

and i want to go to work

33 6 and 3 is my organization’s

contribution to appalachia

but um the truth is there’s thousands of

other innovators out there

i think there’s an entrepreneurial

movement afoot in appalachia not an

effort

not a trend not a pattern not a moment

but a true movement it’s made up largely

of young people not exclusively

but young people and many other people

who believe in the potential of this

place

we realize we haven’t reached our full

potential but we have more to offer our

country

and more to offer our world for for

decades appalachia’s lagged

the national average in startups but i

see this

changing and i see it changing rapidly

one ice cream truck

converted to solar headquarters at a

time one former mountaintop removal site

turned organic farm

one empty building turned into a new

place of business

one formerly unemployed person

re-employed

and becoming the first person in their

family to ever become a college graduate

one at a time i see a transformation

afoot

and unlike previous top-down efforts

which have at best

made modest improvements but with

unintended side effects

and sometimes which have actually made

poverty feel permanent

this entrepreneurial effort is is

happening from the bottom up

and so because of that it’s really built

to last

and instead of begging outside

corporations to come here with

grants and loans and tax credits and

giveaways

these are businesses built in by for and

with

the community we appalachians

know what we need to do now we just need

the investments

to scale those solutions

i never saw the two young men from

williamson i never did see them again

but i have been totally blessed to be

able to serve hundreds of others just

like them

in 2010 i founded the organization

coalfield development which innovated

this 336-3 model

and we started very small one

construction crew of three

in one rural county wayne county but we

stuck with it

and exactly two of the first three

went on to complete the program and

become the first in their family

to earn a degree of higher education it

was one of the happiest days of my life

to see them walk across the stage i kept

thinking about the two men in williamson

the whole time

as we celebrated and clapped together

the best part about graduation night

these guys had their kids there their

toddlers there they were playing with

their caps and gowns

fiddling with the tassel on their hats

this was a generational poverty cycle

reversing itself

before our very eyes in

appalachia we love to work we love to

fix

grow make create

as the global economy shifts to greener

forms of energy

i think we in appalachia have the

hands-on skills that are going to be

needed

to literally rebuild and remake our

economy to convert

buildings and renovate them to become

more energy efficient to install the

solar systems

to grow the food locally to manufacture

new products made out of recycled

content

i see these skills at work every single

day

rebuilding the appalachian economy from

the ground up

and i invite the rest of the world to do

the same

you