RARE Monday Mailing Year 27 | Issue 07
Quote of the Week:
02 November 2020
“It can take as few as one person with a strong will and determination to change the minds of many, to bring friend and foe together at the same table, and steer them in a unified direction. But it takes the strength and perseverance of many to move forward in that direction, to produce meaningful change, and see that brighter future through.” - Johnathan Van Roekel
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Oregon Fast Fact The maraschino cherry as we know it was invented by Oregon State University professor Ernest H. Wiegand. More info.
Why Diverse Communities Are Striving to Redefine the Rural Story Planners as Therapists, Cities as Clients Celebrating Rural Tourism & Our Most Hospitable Cities on World Tourism Day ‘We Belong Out There’: How the Nordic Concept of Friluftsliv – Outdoor Life – Could Help the Pacific Northwest Get Through This COVID Winter (Katie Fields) What Really Makes Us Resilient? (Grace Kaplowitz) To Mend a Broken Internet, Create Online Parks Pandemic Guidelines Don’t Acknowledge Realities of Marginalized Communities Economic Research Promises Better Data for Rural Counties Solar Study Highlights Rural Potential RESOURCE: Cities and Businesses of Color: A Guide to Economic Growth (Grace Kaplowitz) RESOURCE: State of Oregon Equity Framework in COVID19 Response and Recovery (Grace Kaplowitz)
Why Diverse Communities Are Striving to Redefine the Rural Story Daily Yonder When the stories we hear about rural America focus only on white men, they erase generations of community-building work conducted by rural women of color. Setting the record straight by having diverse rural people tell their own stories can help repair the damage and build stronger communities, according to Indigenous, Black, and Latinx women leading a conversation at the Rural Assembly Everywhere virtual festival. “There’s this picture that is painted about who is rural America, and often we aren’t counted in that description,” said Mónica Ramírez, the founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women and moderator of Thursday’s panel. Read the full story.
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2. Planners as Therapists, Cities as Clients
American Planning Association When I introduce myself as a social worker and an urban planner, the response I usually get is something like, "Oh, that's an interesting match!" But they're actually the perfect pairing. When I studied social work, my courses and clinical experience motivated me to ask, "What are the conditions that led people to me as a therapist in the first place?" I realized that the summation of individual trauma is often community trauma, and that's how I became interested in treating the city as my client. Read the full story.
3. Celebrating Rural Tourism & Our Most Hospitable Cities on World Tourism Day Airbnb Newsroom The UNWTO has designated 2020 as the “Year of Tourism and Rural Development” and is shining a light on the economic importance of rural travel as World Tourism Day approaches. At Airbnb, we’re seeing firsthand how travel and tourism are helping rural communities across the globe begin to recover from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, our data shows a shift in travel away from urban destinations and toward more rural areas and smaller communities. For example, in August, more guests stayed in the Catskills and Hudson Valley than stayed in New York City. Read the full story.
4. ‘We Belong Out There’: How the Nordic Concept of Friluftsliv – Outdoor Life – Could Help the Pacific Northwest Get Through This COVID Winter Seattle Times It started with a green light. Andy Meyer noticed it as he looked out from the house where he was staying on Beacon Hill, as his own home underwent renovations to welcome a new baby. “We figured it was a traffic light peeking through the trees,” he said. “And we thought, ‘I wonder if we could walk there one night, if we have the time.’ ” So Meyer, who is a lecturer of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, set out with a friend, vowing to limit his use of Google Maps, and walked in the direction of the green light, hoping to find out what it was. Meyer’s quest is indicative of a new intimacy people are finding in their own homes and neighborhoods in the wake of massive closures and social-distancing practices adopted since the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19. But it’s also an example of the Scandinavian concept known as friluftsliv (pronounced “free-loofts-leev”), which translates most directly to “free-air life.” The term is attributed to Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, but the
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concept of spending time outdoors in all seasons long predates him as a deep-seated element of life in the Nordic countries. Read the full story.
5. What Really Makes Us Resilient? Harvard Business Review What is this thing called resilience, and how can each of us cultivate it in our own lives? To begin to answer these questions, my team at the ADP Research Institute undertook two field studies. The first focused on identifying the sources of resilience, pinpointing the best questions to measure it, and then playing out the specific prescriptions to increase resilience in yourself and those you lead and care about. You can find the full set of results here. The second was a global study of resilience around the world. We asked 25,000 working adults in 25 countries 10 key questions about resilience. In each country we first constructed a sample stratified to reflect the demographic make-up of that country’s workforce, and then in July 2020 we posed these 10 questions to determine the percentage of workers in each country who were highly resilient. Read the full story.
6. To Mend a Broken Internet, Create Online Parks Wired As we head into the most consequential, contentious election in our history, it’s time to fix some of the structural problems that led us to this moment. Let’s face it: Our digital public sphere has been failing for some time. Technologies designed to connect us have instead inflamed our arguments and torn our social fabric. It doesn’t have to be this way. History offers a proven template for how to build healthier public spaces. As wild as it sounds, part of the solution is no further than your nearest public park. Read the full story.
7. Pandemic Guidelines Don’t Acknowledge Realities of Marginalized Communities Daily Yonder In the kickoff event of Rural Assembly Everywhere, the former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the current head of one of the nation’s largest private healthcare philanthropies said the nation needs a more equitable response to the pandemic — one that empowers all Americans to protect their communities’ health. RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 3 of 6
“If you aren’t recognizing that different people in different communities have different needs and are saying everyone (should) do the same thing, you are by nature disadvantaging large sectors of our population,� said Richard Besser, M.D., who is now president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Besser served the CDC for more than a decade, primarily in epidemiology. He led the agency in 2009 during the H1N1 influenza pandemic. Besser was joined by Ligia Cravo, senior program officer at Hearst Foundations and board member of the Center for Rural Strategies, in a wide-ranging conversation about the public health response to Covid-19, the difficulties of creating and distributing a vaccine, and the need to listen to people in rural areas and help them respond to the health crisis. Read the full story.
8. Economic Research Promises Better Data for Rural Counties Argus Observer The Rural Engagement and Vitality (REV) Center, a partnership of Eastern Oregon University and Wallowa Resources, works toward building connections between the university and community members. Recently, two professors and two students began developing one of these partnerships through Community Profiles and Economic Impact Analysis. Faculty and students from EOU will provide socioeconomic research and analytical services for counties and communities to facilitate the understanding of current conditions and trends, support various planning efforts, and undertake economic impact analysis of specific projects or investments in the region. Read the full story.
9. Solar Study Highlights Rural Potential Oregon Business When it comes to finding places to set up shop, solar panel projects often consider two factors: first, how much sun the area receives; second, how close it is to the operation it is meant to power. But according to a new study conducted by Laura Zapata, co-founder of Tennessee-based solar energy company Clearloop and energy nonprofit WattTime, there is another factor that companies should be looking at: how much dirty energy, such as coal and fossil fuel, the project would replace if installed. The dirtier the previous energy source, the more 'bang for your buck' a company gets reducing its carbon footprint.
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Despite Oregon’s reputation as a leader in green energy the study highlights Oregon as one of the states with the most potential to improve its grid in the areas the sun shines the brightest, namely rural areas in the eastern part of the state. Read the full story.
10. RESOURCE – Cities and Businesses of Color: A Guide to Economic Growth City Accelerator on Local Business and Job Growth America’s business landscape is changing. Large, mature businesses, the titans of the 20th century economy, are not producing enough jobs or income to meet growing demand. Meanwhile, smaller, emergent companies are creating the vast majority of new jobs across the United States. These economic realities suggest that policymakers looking to boost local economies and create jobs would be wise to develop and expand strategies that support small businesses and their owners. The demographics of America are changing as well. Over the next 30 years, the United States is projected to not have a single racial or ethnic majority. People of color, historically disenfranchised and excluded from full participation in American life, will represent the greatest share of the United States population. To city government leaders, these two trends— the need for more and stronger small businesses to provide jobs and wealth-building opportunities to owners and workers, and the rise of a historically excluded population of Black and Brown people as the new American majority— represent a significant challenge and a tremendous opportunity. What is the best role for cities to play in nurturing small business ecosystems? Access the guide.
11. RESOURCE – State of Oregon Equity Framework in COVID-19 Response and Recovery Office of Governor Kate Brown During the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Kate Brown’s top priority is to keep all Oregonians safe and healthy. Efforts to mitigate COVID-19 have illuminated how connected our communities are, and how disproportionate effects in one community affect us all across the state. At the same time, Governor Brown and state public health experts recognize that COVID-19 has had disproportionate infection rates and other negative effects on specific communities, including Native American, Tribal members, Black, African American, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, linguistically diverse populations, and those with disabilities. A key learning from COVID-19 both here and across the country is how deeply this virus exacerbates existing racial and economic inequities with wide-ranging health, social, and RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 5 of 6
economic implications. For example, long-standing health inequities have caused higher rates of chronic health problems within communities of color compared to white communities. Because COVID-19 puts people with underlying health conditions at greater risk, people of color face a greater chance of experiencing severe COVID-19 illness. Similarly, economic inequities result in more people of color employed in essential hourly wage jobs, which require them to travel to work and interact with people on the job, putting them at higher risk of exposure to the virus. Access the framework.
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