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