KY Transition Report Smallfile

Voices from Appalachia
Eastern Kentucky
In Transition
An ENGAGE Publication
Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE):
ENGAGE is a coalition of educators, community organizers, and students that transforms their learning experiences into lifelong
connections and cooperative action between peoples and social movements working toward a just and sustainable world.
In 2009, ENGAGE began working with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) as part of the Economic, Social, and
Cultural Rights Mobilization Project. In February 2010, the partnership released Voices from Appalachia: A Human Rights
Perspective, documenting human rights violations related to coal mining in Floyd County, Kentucky.
Hoping to build on relationships that were established during the creation of that report, ENGAGE returned to Eastern Ken-
tucky in the summer of 2010. With momentum building around the emerging Appalachian Transition Initiative, KFTC and
ENGAGE decided to use the summer’s resources to profile and tie together projects contributing to an alternative vision of eco-
nomic development in Eastern Kentucky.
Voices from Appalachia: Eastern Kentucky in Transition was researched late June to early August and written between August and
September 2010 by ENGAGE members who lived in eastern Kentucky for the summer. It documents individuals and projects
in the region working for an economic transition away from extractive industry and toward small scale, local economies.
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
Stories of Transition
The Story of Transition - Making Connections 6
Energy 8
Elijah and Guylaine Collett
Frontier Housing Green Rehab Program, Sherrie Davison
Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest, Casey Sterr
East Kentucky Biodiesel, Nathan Hall
Food 14
Sequestering Carbon, Accelerating Local Economies, Anthony Flaccavento
Cody Montgomery
Pine Mountain Settlement School
The Jackson County Incubator Kitchen, Beth Tillery
Old Homeplace Farm,Will Bowling
Local Business Development 22

Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, Regina Becknell
Kaydee’s Kitchen, Alisha Lucas
Oil Springs Cultural Arts and Recreation Center
Birth True Child Education, Kelli Haywood
Hardwood Designs, Doug Doerfield
Creating Community Spaces 28

CoffeeTree Books, Susan Thomas
The NewCities Initiative and Uniquely Morehead
Summit City Lounge, Amelia Kirby
Youth 32
Youth Build-Jackson, Dana Banks
Staying Together Appalachian Youth: The STAY Project
Ada Smith
Dillon Fisher
Cecily Howell
Samantha Sparkman
Appendix A: Visioning and Tools for Organizing 38
Appendix B: Tips and Resources 43
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Introduction:
Eastern Kentucky
In Transition
Eastern Kentucky counties, like many others in Central Appalachia, have faced persistent, structural poverty for more than 100
years. Household income has been consistently low relative to state and national income levels.
Coal mining as well as state and national funding have historically driven economic development in the region. However, coal
supply and demand projections say coal will run out sooner than anticipated. While recent studies examining average, global
peak coal projections now predict the peak into the current century, many experts argue that Eastern Kentucky has already hit
peak coal, signifying a future of continued decreasing economic benefits from coal in the region. With funding from national
sources also insecure, Eastern Kentucky faces a very real and immediate need for a transition to a sustainable and locally-driven
economy.
Voices from Appalachia: Eastern Kentucky in Transition tells the stories of multiple Eastern Kentuckians who are working to sup-
port such a transition. Some work to diversify the local economy for themselves and future generations, some to feed their fami-
lies, some to work toward healthier communities and environments, and some to increase opportunities to live in the places they
love. These Appalachians are advancing viable alternative energy sources, cultivating local food systems, developing new busi-
nesses, and creating collective spaces for communities to gather. All are working to spread awareness that local people in Eastern
Kentucky have the innovation, strength, and political will to transition to a healthier economy before it is too late.
Comparison of Median Household Incomes and Percentage of Population Below

Poverty Level in 2008 – the United States, Kentucky, and Counties Covered in Voices
From Appalachia.1
USA Kentucky Breathitt

Median Household Income $52,029 $41,489 $24,162
% of Population below Poverty Level 13.2% 17.3% 31.5%
Clay Elliot Floyd Harlan Jackson Johnson Knott

$22,365 $26,464 $27,462 $23,648 $25,084 $31,116 $26,948
38.3% 29.8% 28.1% 33.9% 27.1% 26.0% 30.2%
Historical and projected coal production for Northern and Central
Lee Leslie Letcher Magoffin Perry Rowan Rockcastle Appalachia: 1983-2035. Projections are based on increased competition
$23,786 $23,627 $27,374 $25,890 $28,124 $34,333 $24,650 from other coal-producing regions and sources of energy, the depletion of
the most accessible, lowest-cost coal reserves, and environmental regula-
33.9% 30.0% 29.4% 34.9% 27.2% 25.3% 26.9%
tions (2010 Downstream Strategies).3
2
Eastern Kentucky in Transition
Projections of Decline Curve for the Appalachian Basin from the 2009 United States Geological Survey. The first image is based on 30 billion tons of potentially
economically producible coal and depletion of reserves at current rates, and the second image is based on potential reserves of 11.3 billion tons of low-sulfur coal.2
In the context of current and predicted economic adversity, more collaboration, visioning, and goal setting for Eastern Kentucky’s
future is urgent. In the words of Rowan County resident Doug Doerrfeld, “[Communities need to] actually sit down and inten-
tionally do a visioning process to determine individually what their local assets are, because [the future they envision] is going to
be different for every town and every place.”
Some communities have already begun this process. The towns of Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch in Harlan County have
together held four community meetings for these purposes. According to Harlan County resident Roy Silver, the meetings aver-
aged 40 participants, demonstrating the desire for citizens at the local level to be involved in determining their own futures. On
a regional level, multiple groups have come together to form the Appalachian Transition Initiative in order to create a dialogue
about the future of the economy, workforce, and communities.
Voices from Appalachia intends to inspire and provide tools to spread and further this process, and to this effect includes two ap-
pendices to supplement the twenty-three compiled profiles. Appendix A is a visioning activity that individuals and groups can
use to start thinking concretely about the present in the context of their visions for the future. Also included are several educa-
tional tools to help with the process of bringing individuals’ visions together and translating them into concrete next steps. The
individuals profiled within this report provided a list of suggestions and resources that they have found useful in their work; these
materials are compiled for reference in Appendix B.
A collaborative, grassroots process is itself a change from the way extractive, outside industries currently control political leader-
ship and economic growth in Eastern Kentucky. A growing number of Appalachians are building locally driven economies that
do not force community members to decide between providing for their families and putting their own health and lives in danger.
They are working for and demanding economies that offer a way of life where basic human rights are honored.
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Stories of Transition
The Story of Transition

Making Connections
When it comes to their new radio program Making Connections, Appalshop producers Rich Kirby, Sylvia Ryerson and Mimi
Pickering will cover any Central Appalachian project that is interesting and that supports a healthy, economic alternative for the
region. For example, one of their first stories covers Mark Hamilton and Anna Hess, who have a small-scale farm in Scott County,
Virginia. They have recently invented a special kind of automatic chicken waterer – the Avian Aqua Miser. Because they live and
work in a relatively remote place, Hamilton and Hess rely on high-speed Internet to market their invention. They now make a
living wage by selling their niche project on the Internet.
According to Sylvia and Mimi, Mark and Anna deserve the news coverage. “People are really excited about getting the word out
about what they’re doing, because there’s just so much happening that isn’t being heard or publicized…You’re not really hearing
[about the idea of transition] from that many other places in the media world,” Sylvia says.
Finding people like Mark and Anna means a lot to Sylvia and Mimi, who are attempting to help stimulate a healthy transition for
Appalachian communities by showcasing what already exists. “Every community has examples…and if there are opportunities,
people will take hold of them,” Mimi says. Most of the projects Mimi and Sylvia have found are “incredibly small, local, under-
funded grassroots stuff, [but] there’s an amazing number of projects. There’s no lack of things to cover,” Sylvia says.
Hamilton and Hess’ creative business model exemplifies what Sylvia and Mimi hope to portray through their project: Transition
is not “just about protecting mountains, or just about miners’ health and safety, or just about clean water, or just about good
education,” Sylvia explains. “None of those things can happen in isolation from any other one, so that’s why it’s important to
have coverage that makes an effort to link them together.” With its broad scope of coverage, Mimi and Sylvia hope that Making
Connections can encompass all of the different projects, ideas, and needs in the region.
Mostly, Sylvia and Mimi want to “try to create a dialogue and media that isn’t polarizing and that isn’t alienating…something
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that is balancing, [and] to not perpetuate the structure of publicity that polarizes communities, because that’s what corporate
media is doing right now,” Sylvia says.
Sylvia and Mimi hope to change peoples’ frame of reference, “so that you can be proud to be a coal miner or proud to be of a
coal mining family and still […] see that there’s change coming and there could be good alternatives, because right now the coal
industry has taken that whole heritage and monopolized it and said it’s the same – supporting the coal industry is the same as
being proud of your heritage,” Mimi says.
According to Mimi, it is insignificant whether or not people support coal; “[energy transition is] coming one way or another…
It’s hard to know if it’ll be accompanied by a real effort to re-deploy the people in this region or if they’ll just be left.” The proj-
ects are there. Their long-term sustainability, success, and proliferation will depend on people at the local and national level and
whether they are politically able to support healthy, economic alternatives and a healthy transition.
Making Connections airs on WMMT out of Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky.
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Energy
What I would like to see for this region is a transition to a smaller scale, more diversified approach to both energy and food…for me per-
sonally, I would like to see us really take a big step back and look at our consumption of energy in this region and be serious about drasti-
cally lowering that…then…figure out how we can supply our own energy needs through renewables within this region. - Nathan Hall
Elijah and Guylaine Collett

Like many of the biblical characters in the stories he likes to refer-
ence, Elijah Collett and his wife Guylaine have pursued one goal
with a feverish determination that others might not understand. But
they’re not building a boat in the middle of the desert or attacking
a giant with a slingshot, at least not literally. Elijah and Guylaine
are slowly prying their home away from a growing Goliath – the
electrical grid – creating a small island of energy independence. It’s a
big goal, especially for a family on a tight budget, but one they have
steadfastly worked toward in small, confident steps.
“We started this and we did this slowly over time,” Elijah explains.
In 2000, inspired by the Bible’s command to care for the earth and
the consequences if we don’t—“He will destroy them which destroyed
the earth,” Elijah quotes from Revelation 11:18—the Colletts began
saving up to buy solar panels.
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First, Guylaine dug the ginseng from their property. “We kept the ginseng and stored it in the freezer, until two or three years
ago it went up to $900 a pound,” Elijah says. They also collected pop cans, trading them in for recycling for about 80 cents per
pound. “When the stock market crashed, the bottom fell out of the ginseng, it fell out of the cans,” remembers Elijah. “It fell
out of everything,” adds Guylaine.
The couple turned to other sources of income. To build a power room, they traded some timber from their five-acre plot, leaving
plenty of trees on the mountainsides and along the bottom creek to prevent flooding. In May and June for five years, they grew
strawberries and packed them into ice cream gallon buckets, which they sold fresh door to door. “We sold big Red Chief and
Ozark Beauty strawberries; we had the car full—the back seat, the floor board, the trunk. It was stacked up in the trunk with
strawberries. Sometimes I picked up forty to fifty gallons,” Guylaine recounts.
Every action was carefully calculated to avoid damaging the environment: collecting used cans, leaving much of their forest in-
tact, and growing strawberries without fertilizer or any foreign substances.
Finally, the day came when Guylaine climbed up the hill behind their mobile home, attached the first three solar panels, and
connected the wires as Elijah had instructed her how to do. Although a twice-broken back kept him from doing the lifting, Elijah
was ecstatic.
“I’ve worked in electricity all my life one way or another

here in Kentucky,” Elijah says. “I was repairing tube type
radio and television sets by the time I was sixteen years old.”
He eagerly explains the differences between ways of getting
energy and describes his ideas for a water-powered turbine
power system that would generate electricity without dam-
ming rivers. “There’s more ways to make electrical power
than by using coal or by using nuclear,” he stresses. “Why
don’t we have energy awareness? What I’d like to do is go
around to schools, and educate young people…on how to
save energy in the home and encourage them to explore new,
innovative ways of producing electrical energy.”
Elijah and Guylaine have cut their energy bill from $200-
$300 a month to $50-$70 a month, but they aren’t satisfied
yet. To run their heat pump on their own energy the Col-
letts will have to double the amount of solar energy they are
now producing. The available timber is gone, and most of
the strawberry plants died in the last deep freeze. “I’m a poor
man. I’m on a limited income. And now we’ve run out of
resources to increase our solar,” Elijah says.
But they aren’t about to stop until they reach their goal. “I’d
like to increase it enough to get completely independent of
the power company,” he says.
If you drive through a thick wooded hollow and spot 51

solar panels reflecting above a mobile home, you might want
to stop and ask some questions. It might be the Colletts, or maybe some other family by then, slowly building a sling to fend off
Goliath.
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Frontier Housing Green Rehab Program, Sherrie Davison

Sherrie Davison recalls an elderly woman she met in Elliott County. An inhabitant of a house that has been in the family for genera-
tions, the woman did not want to risk losing her home, even if it meant living without hot water and having to haul water from the
bathroom to the kitchen multiple times a day.
The nonprofit Frontier Housing in Rowan County, where Sherrie works, has seen many situations where people are afraid to invest
in their homes. “We don’t put a lien on their house or anything but they still think that somebody might somehow be able to come
along and take what they’ve got, and so therefore they’d rather continue to live in the conditions they’re living in,” Sherrie says.
As the founder of Frontier Housing’s Green Rehab Program, Sherrie views housing in their ten-county region as an opportunity to
save people money. The program is motivated by current economic trends and the desire to create affordable housing.
When Frontier Housing helped run the first annual Repair Affair in 2009, spending $10,000 per home to repair 20 homes of low-
income, elderly, or disabled residents in Rowan County, workers found that a larger initiative would be necessary to make Kentucky
homes livable and affordable. To make housing affordable, inhabitants would need to find ways to decrease their utility rates. Thus
in August 2009, Frontier Housing started its Green Rehab Program – an initiative to make housing repairs that would increase ef-
ficiency in low-income, livable homes.
Frontier Housing finished its first green rehab job in June 2010, spending thousands of dollars on a single home. Its inhabitant
Drucilla is happy with the outcome. Even with the monthly loan payments, her monthly expenses have decreased. Usually, Sherrie
says, jobs aren’t that big, simply requiring weatherization and sealing, or washer, lighting, window, or door replacement. Frontier
Housing uses ENERGY STAR appliances, HVAC, and windows and doors to save residents hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars
in the long-run.
Because so many Kentucky homes are energy inefficient, there’s plenty of room for improvement. The key, Sherrie says, lies in mak-
ing Kentucky residents aware that they have the option to save that money and take advantage of the opportunity to invest in energy
efficiency so there’s no risk of losing a home a family has passed down for generations.
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Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest, Casey Sterr

From a distance, the building of Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest (A-SPI) in Mt. Vernon looks like any other in Eastern
Kentucky, with its vegetable garden in the yard and wood-paneling construction. Upon closer inspection, however, important
distinctions emerge to tell the story behind a unique building and the mission and values behind A-SPI’s work.
Solar panels line the roof, and Jerusalem artichokes grow adjacent to the
south-facing window to provide natural cooling in the summer. A huge,
concrete cistern collects rainwater, and a clothesline in the front yard gives
the feel of life before the spin cycle dryer. A-SPI has the first net-metered
building in Kentucky and the equipment is easily visible to showcase the
PV system that provides electricity to the local grid and a boost to A-SPI’s
budget.
The nonprofit obtains its garden water, electrical power, and food on site and
looks for ways to encourage this type of self-sufficiency in Eastern Kentucky
in a way that promotes local business and economic development.
To promote such development, A-SPI teaches the public about science and
appropriate technology. In recent years, A-SPI has taken notice of political,
economic, and environmental forces that make transitioning to efficient,
sustainable energy inevitable and imminent throughout the United States.
Like economic transition, the idea of energy transition is nothing new to
Appalachia.
“When the Carter administration was in, there was this tremendous focus
on solar energy, you had all this money thrown at it, so you had anyone off
the street that would put a solar system in. Well, guess what. They failed,
because they were put in wrong,” says Casey Sterr, executive director of A-
SPI.
This time around, A-SPI wants to help ensure that initiatives to increase solar power are supported and successful. As the demand
for solar energy will inevitably rise in the coming years, A-SPI is helping prepare local electricians and contractors to meet it, and
simultaneously promote their businesses, by conducting an annual sustainable energy training series. Through the series, A-SPI
trains participants from throughout the state of Kentucky to professionally install solar thermal and electricity systems. By the
end of thirteen workshops, professionals have completed most of the prerequisites the North American Board of Certified Energy
Practitioner (NACEP) exam requires and can install solar panels.
To assist those who might typically shy away from professional development opportunities because of the initial cost, the non-
profit Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) is partnering with A-SPI to fund travel and
training fees for individuals from Eastern Kentucky.
“People in Eastern Kentucky have the skills, the knowledge, the competence, and the ability to do it themselves… I don’t need
someone from Washington, DC to tell us how to do things in Eastern Kentucky when we have the skills here. In Eastern Ken-
tucky people are very independent by their nature, and very self-sufficient, but we’re losing a sense of that,” Casey says. In part-
nering with MACED, A-SPI hopes to revive some of that independence by providing the tools that allow Eastern Kentuckians
to lead their own energy transition.
Casey recognizes that while rallying around the need for sustainable energy is good, the public needs to see people actually living
the alternative lifestyle, as he has committed to do. With the holistic approach that A-SPI teaches and demonstrates, the center
strives to be a major catalyst for transition to renewable energy in Kentucky.
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East Kentucky Biodiesel, Nathan Hall

While frying chicken nuggets and French fries, most cooks probably do
not realize that the grease they dispose of could power the tractor that
harvested the potatoes they’re about to serve. Nathan Hall, owner and
founder of the new East Kentucky Biodiesel, sees a potential source of
energy in restaurants and cafeterias throughout Eastern Kentucky.
In fact, Nathan is on a quest to help discover that hidden potential in

many of East Kentucky’s existing daily routines.
“I feel like people need to see that there are options, things can actually
work here that isn’t just what they’ve seen growing up here the whole
time. You can try something new and different and it can actually work,”
Nathan says.
Born and raised in Floyd County, Kentucky, at the heart of Central Ap-
palachia, Nathan understands both Appalachia’s challenges and strengths.
And he understands the work he wants to do is much needed. “There is
nowhere that the kind of work I want to do would be more important
than here,” Nathan says.
Starting out, Nathan read a couple of books and went over the different
options for creating energy. “The one that stuck out to me as being doable
on a small scale with a low budget was biodiesel,” he says. “With some elbow grease and a little bit of ingenuity and the willingness
to go out and get used cooking grease, you could basically make, and possibly even sell, renewable fuel.”
In 2009, after experimenting with different approaches, Nathan received a $30,000 grant from the Kentucky New Energy Venture
Fund to construct his new business. His creation by July 2010—a fully self-contained, mobile biodiesel plant set up in a 30-foot long
enclosed trailer that he can drive around the region, collecting cooking grease and producing fuel wherever he takes it.
Nathan says that because many Central Appalachians have experience with coal, natural gas, and other heavy industries, they already
have technical knowledge and expertise that is transferable to renewable energy. He has found several older generation workers will-
ing to volunteer time to his business because of their interest in applying their skills to a unique project.
He explains, “They grew up working manual labor jobs because they had to. Then when they heard about what I’m trying to do here
they got really excited about it; they thought it was an awesome thing that a young person from this area was willing to trying to do
something different and physically work at it. I’ve had guys that work 60 hours a week come help in their off time because to them
it’s fun, it’s like a pastime, to come physically work on this project.”
Using his mobile trailer setup as an asset, Nathan hopes to create more than fuel. By traveling to schools and demonstrating his
work, he wants to promote a greater understanding of the available renewable energy technologies amongst the youth in Appalachia.
Ideally this will be the starting point for other projects that he plans to launch; someday it may provide the fuel for a large-scale ef-
fort to regenerate surface-mined lands with native trees and grasses to provide the feedstock for a more advanced bioenergy process
known as pyrolysis and gasification.
As his project moves forward, Nathan hopes he can be part of a growing movement in Eastern Kentucky. He would like to see other
projects that use the existing skills and assets of the region to create new possibilities for moving forward. He speculates, “It’s just a
matter of having my work and ideas out there and hopefully that will bring other people with similar ideas and motivations to put
some kind of network together. We shall see.”
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Groups Behind the Stories:

Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises, Green Initiatives http://www.fahe.org/about-us
Frontier Housing, Green Solutions http://www.frontierhousing.org/green/index.htm
Genesis Development of Kentucky http://www.genesisdevelopment.us/
Low Income Housing Coalition of Eastern Kentucky (LINKS) http://www.linkshousing.org
People’s Self Help Housing, Inc. http://www.pshhinc.org
Solar Energy Solutions LLCL http://www.solar-energy-solutions.com
Sustainable Energy Training Series http://kysolar.org/news?news_uid=13&group_id=0
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Food
With a lot of work and dedication, it’s possible to imagine some sort of market-based food and farming system being part…of the
transition in Kentucky. So I think we’re at the very early stage of that, [beginning] to create a little bit of momentum... the employment
potential is tremendous. The economic potential of a vibrant, sustainable local food system is certainly there. - Anthony Flaccavento
Sequestering Carbon, Accelerating Local Economies,

Anthony Flaccavento
Anthony Flaccavento wants economic development as much as the next person, but he sees it a little differently than most of the
developers and politicians from in the capital. From Anthony’s perspective, the best development will come from simultaneously
sequestering carbon and accelerating local economies, thus the name of his new consulting firm SCALE—a product of his experience
in farming, building food systems, and sustainable forestry.
“If we can’t figure out a way that our economic initiatives sequester carbon while accelerating local economies, we’re gonna be shoot-
ing ourselves in the foot,” Anthony says. To him, sequestering carbon is a “catch-all” for minimizing disturbance or restoring natural
landscapes, or sometimes building up places of green and production—thus providing environmental benefits.
The acronym is also a play on words, poking fun at the question people have posed to him year after year in his work to present
alternatives to mainstream economic development: “When is it gonna come to scale?” It is a legitimate question, but Anthony says,
“It’s a little bit of an unfair question, because at the same time that they’re asking all of us to scale these things up… the resources are
not commensurate with that desire.”
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In his eleventh season of organic farming on a former tobacco farm, Anthony has discov-
ered the meaning of SCALE at the most personal level. As Anthony and his wife have
slowly succeeded in rebuilding the soil, they have also gradually increased their income
selling produce from the farm to Abingdon, Virginia’s lively farmer’s market, local res-
taurants, and the Appalachian Harvest growers’ network, which delivers food in bulk to
supermarkets and schools.
The farm now employs several people, including locals and other young people from out-
side the region that have expressed an interest in farming. Anthony believes it is crucial to
introduce young people to food production even if they do not become long-term farmers
so that they relate to food on a deeper level as they experience the process of growing it.
He has the same mentality towards people shopping at the farmer’s market.
“We try to help people act into a new way of thinking… It’s inserting people—not just
the entrepreneurs and farmers, but the consumers, which is most people—into these things, making it possible for their daily choices
to reflect some value that they thought they couldn’t,” Anthony says.
As for inserting entrepreneurs and farmers into his consulting practice, Anthony hosts tours of his farm for people throughout the
region, demonstrating sustainable techniques for pest and disease control, season extension, and other farming practices. “The farm
itself has become a little bit of a learning hub [for those] who have been farming for years and are trying to switch to organic, and
for people who are brand new to farming and think it’s something they want to do,” he says. He hopes that through SCALE he can
bring his successes and his failures to a wider audience of people who are eager to develop sustainable farming or other ecologically
friendly enterprises.
Considering local economies or regional visioning, Anthony asks, “What can we do? How do we build this up? Can we launch
farmer’s markets in this area? How do we get more people involved in farming?” He hopes that throughout Central Appalachia he
can help emerging sustainable food, farming, and development initiatives to grow in scale, but mostly, to reach “SCALE.”
Cody Black Montgomery

Cody Montgomery believes in an economic transi-
tion that develops county-level assets for use in all
parts of the state. “I’d like to see more connection
between the east, central, and west part of the state…
to keep the inputs in Kentucky, keep the infrastruc-
ture here, treat it like a commonwealth, the way it
was intended,” he says. For his own county Magof-
fin, he believes the average acre of bottomland per
household is an asset that locals can use to develop a
small-scale, agricultural economy.
He hopes this conversion to a simpler style of living

will create the sense of community he has heard in
the stories of his parents and grandparents: “They
said people were better, life was better, everything was just better. So I’d like to see it go back to that, more to a subsistence agri-
culture type economy. People helped one another with labor and food and just anything. There was a lot more community, more
involvement with people.”
Cody learned to appreciate the natural world by hiking with his grandmother while he was growing up on Cripple Creek in
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Magoffin County. She and her sisters spent much of their

time in the woods as children. “That’s how they played.
So they appreciated it, and when they grew up they tried
to instill that in their children and a little bit more with
me. We would go caving a lot and fishing a lot, so I was
always in it.” He also recalls helping his grandmother in
her garden.
Later in life, he found himself unhappy with the available

employment options and looking for something different.
“I was trying to think of something I could do that would
be morally satisfying, and it just hit me one day that I could
farm. That was about the only thing I could do,” he says.
Seeing holes in his formal education, Cody has educated

himself about the world around him through books, In-
ternet, and life experience. He watches YouTube videos to supplement what his grandmother taught him about organic farming.
Now, after five years of experimentation with his acreage at Cripple Creek, he has begun selling his crops. He has sold some hot
peppers to the local Mexican restaurant, and he preserves a good portion of the vegetables he grows.
In Morehead, where Cody attends Morehead State University, he has worked with other students and community members
through Sustainable Morehead to install community gardens around town. At one apartment complex, he has already seen peo-
ple come together around the raised beds they put in. “I was over visiting a friend and…there were about six people just standing
over their little boxes talking about their vegetables and stuff.” It symbolized the first step toward the sense of community Cody
hopes to generate through local foods and small scale agriculture.
For other young people who find themselves questioning the dominant economic and cultural trends, Cody offers a hands-on
approach. “Tell them to come to Cripple Creek. I’ll teach them how to grow vegetables and all that good stuff. That’s a good
education right there; get some soil under your fingernails.”
Pine Mountain Settlement School

The Pine Mountain Settlement School (PMSS) is a rich and invaluable store
of local history. Staff have carefully preserved many of the buildings on the
grounds, relics of the time when the school functioned as a boarding school.
Today, PMSS is an environmental education center and also offers historical
preservation workshops, teaching traditional skills to visitors. Since 2008,
PMSS has devoted staff time and resources towards building a sustainable
future, especially with its food and energy programs.
Situated on the outskirts of Leslie, Harlan, Letcher, and Perry Counties,

PMSS is in a prime spot to serve as a community resource where county
programs may not extend. This ideal location also has the potential to help
PMSS connect the residents of these counties to invaluable resources, such
as neighbors and county extension agents. Based on these promising pos-
sibilities, PMSS recently began several projects to engage citizens on both
the family and community level so that they might begin to think about
transitions.
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“Transition is central to food and energy, or food and energy is central to transition; they are the two main ways that humans
anywhere on the face of the earth interact with the environment and the world around us and are central to all economies…and
to all sorts of cultural-social interactions as well,” says Randal Pfleger, Sustainability Director at PMSS.
For PMSS, supporting a food market is not just about food or job opportunities. “We see value in growing food and having that
be an integral part of the community’s regular function, instead of other people growing the food in another part of the country
or even in another part of the world, shipping it in to the grocery store where people are working their wage jobs so they can
barely get enough money to buy that food that was grown elsewhere,” says Jason Johnson, a PMSS intern. Jason is also working
on a documentary project with Grow Appalachia, a project that teaches, supports, and empowers people in Appalachia to grow
more of their own food.
According to Jason, the challenge lies in creating a food economy that maintains the underground gift economy that is traditional
in the region, while addressing the lack of healthy food choices in grocery stores. With the exception of food that people grow in
their own gardens, “the food that’s available isn’t necessarily the quality or the widest selection that you’d want,” Jason says.
For now, PMSS focuses on supporting community food production, with the hopes of developing a market as this progresses. In
the past year, PMSS staff and Americorps volunteers visited more than forty homes and gardens of families with whom they are
developing new relationships. “One of the discussion topics is food and energy,” Randal says.
While many surrounding community members

have access to gardens either at their own homes
or through family or extended networks, not ev-
eryone is so lucky. To this end, PMSS has created
a community garden for those who have not had
the opportunity to learn gardening skills as well
as people who want to get new gardening ideas or
just meet new friends with similar interests.
Samantha Sparkman, a summer intern with

PMSS who lives a few miles up the road from the
school, says she always wanted to learn to gar-
den, but her dad would not teach her in his own
garden. “He won’t let me in…I think it’s kind of
his sanctuary, and you’ll find other people that
don’t like you to mess with their gardens, too,”
she says.
So far, Randal, Jason, and Samantha have worked with almost 15 families in their home gardens. “Many gardeners—they kind
of get ahead of themselves in the spring and then don’t have the right follow through in the summer and fall and may not even
harvest some of their crop. So, I think that’s part of what we’ve been able to do is say, ‘You can do it and I’ll help you do it. And
we’ll get through it and have a good harvest,’” Randal says.
In this spirit, the PMSS team has helped with hoeing, tilling, weeding, planting, digging ditches, building fences, and sharing
tools, in addition to working with several families from the community to maintain the community garden.
“We’re trying to get to where we have more community events so that the participants actually get to know each other better…So
many people just don’t know their neighbors. Specifically, a lot of the successful gardeners don’t know other successful gardeners
in the community. We think there could be some peer sharing and learning that way. There’s a great amount of knowledge here
in the community,” Jason says. “It’s about empowering leaders and helping people engage in civic dialogue that leads to transition
and gets people organized on their own.”
17
The Jackson County Regional Food Center, Beth Tillery

The Jackson County Regional Food Center Appalachian incubator kitchen is a shining example of the creative new ideas that
come to fruition when a committed group of people gets connected to available resources. Beth Tillery and three other Jackson
County community members first envisioned the kitchen in 1992 and worked with the non-profit Appalachian Alternative Ag-
riculture of Jackson County (3AJC) until it opened in the summer of 2010.
Beth, who has been farming in Jackson County since 1978, is driven by her desire for equal opportunity employment op-
tions in her community, coupled with her desire to add value to farmers’ products. “In [commodity] agriculture, some-
body else is going to tell you what you’re going to get for your product,” Beth explains. After 20 years of struggling fi-
nancially because she felt she had to accept someone else’s price for her products, she decided to take matters in her own
hands. Beth began growing special pumpkins and gourds that she could decorate and sell at craft shows throughout the re-
gion. Now, she hopes to support others—from farmers to jelly makers—in a similar process of innovation and creativity.
Back in 1992, members of 3AJC wanted to expand local markets for farmers in the area. They approached the federal prison in
Clay County, where the kitchen staff was enthusiastic about the idea. But as it turned out, the prison’s kitchen did not have the
capacity to take the farmers’ unprocessed raw vegetables. The facility needed food that was prepackaged and ready to serve.
“So that’s when the idea of the kitchen came about originally,” says Beth. “So farmers could grow, they could bring their stuff
here, they get value added to it, and then sell it.” One of the four members, Jeff Henderson, is the Jackson County extension agent
and has had the connections and resources to help make the project happen. Soon after the idea formed, he found a company that
was willing to donate land to the project. “They took us over here and said, ‘This is what we got, what piece do you want?’And
so we picked this one, because [Route] 30, the new road, will be coming right out here,” Beth explains.
18
Since then, the group has been busy researching, writing grants, and implementing a feasibility study, all with logistical support
from the extension office and others. “We’ve been jumping through all of the hoops,” Beth says.
After eight years building the kitchen from scratch, it is ready to open, and much excitement surrounds this new, multi-county
resource. The excitement extends beyond the founders and farmers, caterers, canners, and potential food processing enterprises
who will use the kitchen; community members, using their assets and connections, are supporting and driving the project. “There
has been so much community support that it’s been unbelievable—whether it be financial or just somebody giving us advice,”
Beth says. The incubator kitchen will not only add value to products; it will add value to the community and region.
Old Homeplace Farm, Will Bowling

The 1,100-pound mamas know it’s time for dinner when Will Bowling, a Clay County farmer in his late twenties, starts moving
their fence posts. After a day digesting the grass in today’s pasture down to a good height, the 23 cows and most of their calves
do not hesitate to move on over to fresh food.
Will’s family, owners of Old Homeplace Farm, recently found out that it’s best not to let the cows eat the grass down too short, so
Will and his dad started changing the cows’ pasture once a day. The farmers are also in the process of transitioning the mothers to
a later gestation phase. When working with elk at the Fish and Wildlife Services, Will noticed that large ruminants in Kentucky
tend to give birth in June.
But perhaps the most defining feature of the Old Homeplace Farm is the high-density rotation grazing methodology, used to
grow not just cows – but also goats, sheep, and even a few chickens. Mob grazing mirrors the feeding pattern of wild herbivores,
which tend to cling together and move pasture often. Will and his family direct the different species’ grazing in order to capitalize
on symbiotic relationships between them. For example, when cattle are finished with their pasture, they’ll have largely cleared it
of intestinal worms that can sicken goats and sheep.
19
The breakthrough in how his family approached farming, Will explains, came a few years back, when they were still farming
conventionally. The family struggled to make ends meet with their 60 acres of pasture, a relatively small farm in the conventional
cattle market. Kudzu, ironweeds, and other invasive species also started to become an issue as they began taking over pastureland
at an uncontrollable rate.
Their county extension agent suggested goats. “You turn the goats in there …You’ve effectively taken a problem and turned it
into an asset. Because no longer do you have a weed per se that’s taken over your farm. Now you just have another type of forage
to grow another type of animal,” Will says. When Will’s family saw how well that worked, they started believing there must be
better ways than modern conventional farming methods.
It has helped that Will’s parents are practiced at adapting. When Will was seven his dad left the coal mining industry to take over
a convenience store, and shortly after Will left for college, his parents had the opportunity to take over the farm they own now,
which has been in his mom’s family for six generations. “Obviously, we jump into things without knowing what we’re doing,”
Will jokes.
Indeed, the Bowling family had no experience running a

business when they started their store, nor had they any ex-
perience running a farm when they started raising cattle,
but they have eased into things carefully. Will and his father
have done extensive research on different farming models –
taking knowledge from the Internet, their neighbors, differ-
ent agricultural organizations and their county’s agricultural
extension agent, and just about anywhere else they can find
it. Will studied mob grazing for a year and then went to visit
a farmer in Missouri doing a similar style of grazing before
he was convinced that it was the best method for his farm.
“We just felt our way along and were willing to kind of go
out on a limb a little bit and take a chance on some things,”
Will says. “We didn’t have a lot of preconceived ideas neces-
sarily. We didn’t have a whole lot of bad habits that we had
to break, for lack of a better term.” In this way, Will believes
his family’s lack of experience has benefited the farm.
Now, Will’s family is on an intentional path towards self-suf-

ficiency. They’ll provide as much as possible for themselves,
and sell what they can.
The vision for the farm is in line with Will’s vision for Eastern Kentucky, one that addresses past and current economic challenges
and problems rooted in development plans that use local labor but export money. “The best way around that in my mind is for
us as a society, as communities, to start looking for what it is to be more self-supporting,” Will says. “We need to come together
and start doing more things for ourselves, as a region – even at the local level.”
An important part of this will be applying the culture of providing for oneself, which Will says is already inherent to the region
and to business. It’s possible, Will says – certainly in farming. “Options are good. I think what we’re doing here – especially if
you’re going to be doing more marketing….you can make a pretty good living off a farm of not even this size,” Will says. Will
emits patience as he explains the importance of thinking in terms of seasons and years and of restraining from targeting high
production. “It doesn’t matter how many widgets you’re turning out if you’re going bankrupt doing it, and ruining your farm in
the process,” Will says.
20

Appalachian Alternative Agriculture of Jackson County (3AJC) 606-493-7058
Appalachian Sustainable Development http://www.asdevelop.org
The Community Farm Alliance http://www.communityfarmalliance.org/index.html
Grow Appalachia http://www.berea.edu/appalachiancenter/growappalachia
Pine Mountain Settlement School http://www.pinemountainsettlementschool.com/
Sequestering Carbon, Accelerating Local Economies (SCALE) 276 628-4727, flaccavento@ruralscale.com
Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) http://www.ssawg.org/
Sustainable Morehead http://www.sustainablemorehead.org/
21
Local Business Development

My vision for the region would be that we would be able to have our storefronts and downtown not empty, have businesses to be
more prone to want to stay instead of leave, that there might be more options for those who do continue to stay here. We are still
extremely isolated to some extent—for instance, those things that most people take for granted, like variety, even a theater…How
are we going to change our communities from the inside? - Regina Becknell
Mountain Association for Community Economic

Development, Regina Becknell
When Regina Becknell talks about businesses —a diner, a dance studio, local electricians, and dozens more—that have received
Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) loans you can hear the smile in her voice.
“My job is much more than just a job; it’s also a personal investment,” she says. “My parents are still here, my brother’s here, my
children go to school here.”
Six years ago, Regina opened MACED’s second branch, based in Paintsville, to provide lending opportunities in Eastern Kentucky.
For MACED, there are reasons for making business loans that go far beyond money. MACED prioritizes businesses that provide
important goods and services to the community: child and elder care, cultural resources, natural resources, and agricultural diversi-
fication. “Our number one goal is to improve the communities in which we operate,” she explains. “MACED envisions building a
sustainable Eastern Kentucky by providing tools for individual and community growth.”
Regina explains, “Economic development has changed. It’s not Toyota coming to Eastern Kentucky anymore. How are we going to
change our communities from the inside? It’s trying to build things that we think will help [communities] to grow themselves and
make themselves better.”
22
This goal of community development influences the way MACED oper-

ates. Their loans have lower fixed interest rates and more flexible terms than
conventional loans. Starting at the initial meeting, Regina and her colleague
Yvonne Burchett do everything they can to support clients, offering classes,
technical assistance, and regular follow-up consultation.
Education is the foundation of MACED’s work. In five-week FastTrack

classes, students learn how to write a business plan, brainstorm creative busi-
ness ideas to fill local needs, talk about how to collaborate and get support
from people they know, and produce budgets and financial statements. “I
think [the students] learn so much more from each other than they learn
from us,” Regina adds.
Regina and Yvonne take education beyond the formal classes; they sit down
with clients and potential clients to talk through the best ways to develop
strong businesses. When a woman approached MACED for $150,000 to
open a cupcake shop, Regina talked her through some different options.
”That’s a big task,” Regina suggested. “Let’s chop that up into some smaller
tasks. Have you considered going into catering at home, or going to these
functions and getting your name out there and letting people know that you make cupcakes and pies and things, and doing things
at home first before you purchase a storefront?”
MACED also encourages choices that benefit the community and environment. A carbon credit program pays people to use their
land in sustainable ways. Several initiatives focus on energy efficiency. “Just one little tiny project can make [someone] look at the
whole entire thing differently,” Regina says. “They’re thinking, ‘Oh, that’s expensive.’ But when they start saving money, all of a sud-
den, they think energy saving is the best thing in the world!”
Regina admits she is a workaholic, but she wants to make sure local businesses have all the support they can get. “I’ve always felt
like Eastern Kentucky people—we’re strong,” she says. “[People] just seem to be missing a little tiny piece to help them get over that
hump, which was how to run a business and how to make it successful.”
Kaydee’s Kitchen, Alisha Lucas

When Alisha Lucas’s father-in-law offered to buy a building in downtown Beat-
tyville on loan so Alisha could open a diner, she knew exactly what she would
name it. Just weeks before, she had dreamt of a downtown diner called “Kaydee’s
Kitchen,” named after her only daughter, Kaydee. The possibility of opening a
diner had seemed like a far-off dream, but her father-in-law’s offer made it pos-
sible.
Alisha had been struggling to find a job in Beattyville for months and decided to
take the plunge into the restaurant industry where her only previous experience
was as a server.
23
She received a $15,000 loan from the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) to cover
her start-up fees. “Without [MACED] we wouldn’t be here,” she says.
Kaydee’s Kitchen opened in February 2010, and offers a mixture of local favorites and dishes normally only found outside
the county. Alisha and three other women from Beattyville work at the restaurant, and though the work is stressful, their
working relationships are collaborative. The other women are constantly brainstorming new ways to expand the restaurant’s
customer base.
Like most small towns, the restaurant’s main source of publicity is word of mouth. By spreading the news among their
extended social network, Alisha and her husband managed to generate a hectic opening day.
“It was supposed to be a soft opening, but it was madness in here. There were three or four hours where people were literally
standing,” Alisha says.
Long lines make for a great opening day anywhere, but is especially impressive for Beattyville. The town was once more
lively, Alisha explains, but now many of the buildings stand empty. Lee County, Kentucky, where Beattyville is the largest
town, is one of the most poverty-stricken counties in the nation. It is unusual to see a local business such as Kaydee’s Kitchen
thrive.
Alisha would like to see more locals attempt to revive Beattyville’s economy. “I wish all the empty buildings here on Main
Street were businesses,” she says.
Hopefully, with Kaydee’s Kitchen as a model, people will see that creating businesses in downtown Beattyville is not far-
fetched at all. Strong support networks in the region, including organizations like MACED, can stimulate local economic
growth where individual funding falls short.
With that boost, some hard work, and a little luck, others like Alisha will see their dreams come to fruition.
Oil Springs Culture and Arts Recreation Center,

Brenda Cockerham
A strong arts and craft culture persists in Appalachia. Many of the crafts are inspird by needs that might send someone to the store
today: quilts for the winter; baskets and pottery for storage; music for entertainment. Some crafts were developed simply for the
sake of keeping the hands busy. Today, the role of arts and crafts is proving just as essential for creating economic opportunity
and opportunities for personal development.
Coming from a family of storytellers, Johnson County Extension agent Brenda Cockerham understands the potential that comes
with nurturing Appalachian craft makers’ talents, many of which have been passed down for generations. A family might special-
ize in storytelling, playing musical instruments, quilting, or making soap, she explains. All these talents can be brought together
now at the Oil Springs Cultural Arts and Recreation (OSCAR) Center in Johnson County.
Recently art programs have been repeatedly cut from schools’ curricula, and lately in Eastern Kentucky, schools have been closed
and consolidated. Community members in Oil Springs decided to take a former rural school building into their own hands. They
reopened the building as the OSCAR Center—a place for people to learn and create.
24
Art has long been a common ground for communities in Johnson County.
In 1993, when Brenda was an Extension agent, the Extension Agency sent
out 100 representatives to gather input from 500 community members.
People said that they would like to see programs that encouraged historic
preservation and storytelling. For Brenda, the OSCAR Center is part of this
vision.
Most of the space at the OSCAR center is used by local artists to teach class-
es on quilting, pottery making, basket weaving, and painting, for people of
all ages from the region.
Martha Risner, a retired school teacher turned potter, teaches classes at the
Center and hopes to sell her pottery at local craft fairs in the region. The
OSCAR Center has meant a lot to her—nowhere else could she have access
to a kiln and be around so many other artists.
Places like the OSCAR Center provide an alternative space for children and
adults to develop themselves and learn how to solve problems creatively,
Brenda says. “Creating provides people with a sense of self-worth and value. It’s an important part of the future to be creative
and resourceful.”
The process also serves as a kind of therapy in hard times and a way for elderly members of the community to stay physically and
mentally active. Tina Penix identified 100 artisans in a five-county region in order to create a database including all of them. The
artisans she interviewed repeatedly told her stories of emotional healing rooted in their artistic practices. “She said she felt like a
therapist,” Brenda recalls.
In addition, Brenda believes art can address economic shortcomings in the region. For some, the income from selling their crafts
can help fill gaps between their paychecks and their expenses. With the center, “we wanted to create a platform to allow individu-
als to thrive and grow industry,” she explains.
To this end, Brenda and those she works with are using the center to connect artists with buyers and help them learn about
business strategies. Those at the OSCAR Center are convinced that art is not only a critical part of Appalachia’s past, but also its
future.
Birth True Child Education,

Kelli Haywood
Five years ago, Kelli Haywood had a difficult experience understanding and com-
municating her needs during childbirth. She ended up delivering her first daughter
through an unnecessary Caesarean Section at a hospital in Louisville. Since then,
she has devoted herself to learning about pregnancy, childbirth, and the options
available to expecting women.
Kelli is now a trained doula, and since February 2010 has provided Lamaze childbirth and yoga classes for new and expecting par-
ents.4
“My passion is that women go into their birthing experience in full knowledge of their options and that they are making fully
informed choices…and they’re supported in those choices by their care provider,” Kelli says.
25
Kelli is concerned by the dominant, intervention heavy approach to childbirth that led her doctors to pressure her into a C-
section. “I think the shift happened when the births moved from being attended by midwives to physicians who rely on their
surgical skills and medical knowledge instead of approaching birth as a natural process,” she says. “Though we are fortunate to
have obstetricians in high risk situations and emergencies, the change we’ve seen are those same interventions used in normal,
low risk birth.” Kelli believes that in order to have well-rounded healthcare, both physicians and midwives should provide the
healthcare women need.
Only 40 years ago, many central Appalachian mothers did not have ready access to hospitals when going into labor. Since the
construction of new hospitals and improved access to healthcare in the region, the medical model of childbirth has prevailed.
More than a third of births in Kentucky happen through C-sections, though the rate of surgical births for medical reasons
should be no more than 15 percent.5 “There are women who don’t even consider choosing natural, midwife, home birth, or
simply changing care providers to someone they are comfortable with, because they really don’t know they had an option. Like
most of the country, [Eastern Kentucky now has] a very medicalized birthing climate,” Kelli says.
Through her work, Kelli offers information on options for childbirth. She thinks education is a crucial step in shifting the
regional and national birthing culture. As access to information on the problems with our birthing culture and the alternatives
that are available become more widespread, women will begin to demand a different sort of care, she says.
Kelli believes Eastern Kentucky could actually be a pioneer towards a greater national understanding of midwifery and could
lead the way in providing more options for pregnant women. Kentucky is home to one of the nation’s premier midwifery
schools, Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing. Relative to the rest of the U.S., Appalachia has a recent past of wide-
spread midwifery and home births. According to Kelli, coupling the wisdom of the local culture with the resources of modern
day systems will ultimately direct a successful economic transition, in the medical field as well as any other.
Hardwood Designs, Doug Doerrfeld

Nestled in the woods, Doug Doerrfeld’s house is a honeycomb of small rooms, each unique in shape and size and filled with home-
made things: furniture, shelving units, a cutting board. The doors and windows of his home are oriented along different cardinal
directions—Doug constructed his home to take advantage of the natural patterns of the sun. Through the house’s design, the sun
supplies an estimated 25% of his family’s winter heating. The rest they supply by burning wood.
Doug has been a carpenter for 30 years, since moving to Eastern Kentucky in 1979. He learned the trade from experience, working
with and learning from established carpenters. For the first 15 years he worked on large projects such as building homes, including
some passive solar homes like the one he lives in.
More recently, he has been making custom furniture: china cabinets, beds, tables, entertainment centers, bathroom vanities, shelving
units, blanket chests—using almost exclusively local cherry, walnut, and maple lumber from a third-generation lumber company,
Harold White Lumber in Morehead. “Locally grown wood is good for the environment, good for the local economy, and it’s more
affordable,” he says.
Working to protect the environment and supporting the local economy has been an important endeavor for Doug. He came to East-
ern Kentucky because he loved the forests and the natural ecosystems here. Fifteen years ago, he got involved with Kentuckians for
the Commonwealth (KFTC) to work on policy issues surrounding forestry and logging. “I fell in love with the forests, the streams,
and the ecology. [That] gave me a deep connection to wanting to protect the things that are really substantive and beautiful here.
And that is what spurred me, because there were so many poor logging operations going on,” he says.
Today Doug remains involved with KFTC. Most recently, he has been active on KFTC’s Stop Smith Campaign, which opposes the
construction of an unneeded coal-powered electric plant, the Canary Project dealing with coal issues, and the High Roads Initia-
tive, an attempt to build support for an economy that is not based on coal. He believes installing and maintaining renewable energy
sources like wind and solar in homes and businesses would create many local jobs.
26
Additionally, Doug says, there needs to be a process of local visioning and planning for the future:
“People [in Appalachia] are hard-working, they’re extremely innovative, they have a lot of initiative, and they’ve developed
a wonderful culture in the last hundred and thirty years. What’s most needed now is the sense of urgency and a sense that
it’s time to begin doing an assessment in all the local communities of what their assets are, and then begin envisioning for
themselves what’s going to happen next…because it’s going to be different for every town and every place.”
Doug acknowledges that transitioning and diversifying the economy is a difficult but necessary task, given predictions of coal run-
ning out in the next 20 years. He believes the economic transition can be done and is hopeful that the next generation will see it
through: “It’s going to take very special people who are here now from this area, who are willing to commit to building the new
economy. It’s all about young people.”

The Appalachian Artisan Center http://www.artisancenter.net/
Appalshop Media Institute http://appalshop.org/
Area Development Districts http://www.kcadd.org/
Birth True Childbirth Education http://birthtrue.wordpress.com/
Central Appalachian Network (CAN) http://www.cannetwork.org/
The Hindman Settlement School http://www.hindmansettlement.org/
The Mountain Arts Center http://macarts.com/
Mountain Association for Community Economic Development http://maced.org/
Oil Springs Cultural Arts and Recreation (OSCAR) Center 606-789-8108
Small Business Development Centers http://www.bplans.com/sbdc/#Kentucky
Southeast KY Economic Development Corporation (SKED) http://www.southeastkentucky.com/
27
Creating Community Spaces

The polarization that’s happening makes a lot of people not want to be near people who have a different vision for what’s possible
here…there is such a push to keep people polarized, and to keep people from seeing other options. This is that sort of collective gathering
space…that sort of embodies our values of shared space, and of openness, of inclusivity…a place for stuff to foment. - Amelia Kirby
CoffeeTree Books, Susan Thomas

Sit at CoffeeTree Books for an hour and you will see dozens of people grab a muffin or novel, greeting neighbors and friends as
they weave through the store. Some rush out with their purchase, but more often than not, they settle at a table with a friend, a
sandwich, a paperback—or all three.
Looking around, Susan Thomas, who has managed the family-owned Morehead bookstore since 2005, is happy with what she
sees. “People bring their families here; they hang out,” she says. “I work really hard to make sure people who walk in here feel
welcome, and that this is an inviting environment.” Not a home or a workplace, CoffeeTree Books sees itself as a third place,
“where you go out into the community and you interact with people,” Susan explains. “We want to be that place where people
do come and congregate.”
Susan also sees the bookstore as evidence of the advantages of local business. “Does the chain bookstore know about the local
poets? Are they connected and know what people read?” she asks. “We really know our customers. We know them personally; we
know their families; we know their children. I know when I buy a picture book with a certain type of illustration that I have a
28
customer, who when she walks in the door, I can say, ‘Wait
till you see this!’ because she loves the illustrations. You don’t
get that from Barnes and Noble.”
When business owners work with their customers and em-

ployees on a daily basis, the business environment can reflect
their personal commitment as community members. “This
is our community, and we’re very invested in this commu-
nity,” Susan says.
CoffeeTree Books’ employees seem to share that sense of

investment. “I don’t think [for] the people who work for
us—it’s just a job,” Susan says. “They have freedom. I give
them a lot of responsibility.” She has seen the rewards of
her managing style. “I can’t make every decision. And it’s
good. I mean, sometimes they make decisions I wouldn’t
make, and it adds something different to the mix.” With her
support, employees of all ages manage their own sections,
picking books to order and maintaining the shelves. “My
employees are really close to one another,” she says of the
staff’s dedication. “They’re here when they’re not working. They hang out here all the time.”
Susan embodies her passionate advocacy for creating a local economy through her work. “When you buy your books locally, you
support your local economy,” she explains. “Why would you send your tax money to someplace else?”
The NewCities Initiative and Uniquely Morehead

Morehead is no typical town. Talk with many of the local busi-
ness owners and local consumers; you might be impressed with
many peoples’ deep awareness of the value of buying local and
the networks that community members are working overtime to
cultivate.
According to Susan Thomas, much of the awareness and activity

around building the local economy from the ground up grew out
of the NewCities Initiative, which came to Morehead in 2006.
In Eastern Kentucky, the NewCities Institute has partnered with
West Liberty in Morgan County, Inez in Martin County, and
communities in Harlan County, in addition to Morehead under
the NewCities Initiative. With its highly participatory model of visioning and twelve principles of community building, the
NewCities Initiative differs from many typical local chambers of commerce, that don’t necessarily involve as many sectors
of the local community as possible.
According to Doug Doerrfeld, the initiative in Morehead effectively used this process for two years of intense visioning and
community asset and problem analysis. Groups talked about goals, such as increasing Morehead State University’s participa-
tion in the community and instituting more recreational businesses.
29
The Uniquely Morehead Campaign also came out of the NewCities Initiative. The buy local campaign eventually made its
way to Susan Thomas, who decided to take on educating the community and its leaders about the importance of shopping
in places that are “Uniquely Morehead”: Cave Run Bike Shop, Good Shepherd’s Printing Services, and her own CoffeeTree
Books, among others. The campaign promoted buying local through t-shirts, bumper stickers, radio adds, and Facebook.
“People love the bumper stickers, and they love the t-shirts,” Susan says. “Our Facebook page has really probably done as
much as anything…We’ll put in if a local business is having a sale, or if a local business is opening.”
The NewCities Initiative has left its mark on Morehead, spawning new businesses and sparking local awareness. The chal-
lenge will be to maintain and spread the effects, while slowly continuing to unify the community around the values and
principles they’ve come to articulate (see http://www.newcities.org/diaries/).
Summit City Lounge,

Amelia Kirby
For the first eight years after Amelia Kirby came back home to live in
Whitesburg, Kentucky, she left town almost every weekend to find some-
thing to do. In 2007 she and her husband Joel started a project hoping to
inspire a change in Whitesburg’s downtown. Many told them it was impos-
sible, but they opened Summit City Lounge on Main Street that year. “We
wanted to take all the things that we used to leave town to go find and put
them all into one place, so a coffee shop, a bar, live music venue, art gallery,
food we want to eat,” Amelia says.
Amelia and Joel had some help from friends and family with restaurant experience and two imaginations seasoned by travel out-
side the region, but had little experience running their own business. They were lucky to have stable day jobs, and the novelty of
a place like Summit City in Whitesburg allowed them to figure things out by trial and error.
Summit City has exceeded Amelia and Joel’s expectations. Before, there was no place for all the different kinds of people who
make up Whitesburg and the surrounding area to meet and interact. Since opening Summit City, however, Amelia has been struck
with the reality of her town. “There are so many people here that are amazing and interesting and complicated and young…it’s
just there’s not a place for us to go because we were all leaving every weekend to go to Lexington or Ashland or wherever…[With
Summit City] people see that this community isn’t the way they thought it was in a lot of ways,” Amelia says.
The space embodies the belief that there can be fulfilling work in Whitesburg for people that aren’t in the medical, teaching, or
mining fields, and it supports local work by displaying local art, serving local food, and showcasing local music. Further, the
owners have not applied any of their own political positions to Summit City and have made the expectation clear that everyone
respects everyone while at the lounge. The space is thus an intentional act against polarization in the community.
When Amelia and Joel chose the “radical act” of moving back to Appalachia to work for the home they loved, they faced what
Amelia calls the “tyranny of lowered expectations.” People simply believed something like Summit City would not be possible
because Whitesburg was not good enough or the kind of place where people would patronize a sophisticated, multipurpose
lounge.
But Summit City has helped raise those expectations. The project has proven that “yes, we can do something else here. There are
possibilities,” and it seems to have initiated a wave of change in downtown Whitesburg. The mayor and city council have plans
30
for promoting ecotourism in the area, and across the street from Summit City, someone is opening another bar. “I think it’s a lot
of latent energy that got sparked because somebody was willing to take that first step,” says Amelia.
Amelia and other business owners understand that collaboration rather than competition will be crucial for the town’s survival.
Far from fearing the new bar, Amelia has tried to support its owners. She views it as “one more reason to come to Whitesburg.”
Amelia and Joel are not competing for profits—that is not what Summit City is about. “We’re both from here, grew up in the
mountains, left and went to college, and moved back home, because we wanted to be here…and have things that we wanted to
care about here. [We want to] work for this place,” Amelia explains.

Appalachian Transition Initiative http://appalachiantransition.net
Kentuckians For The Commonwealth http://www.kftc.org/
NewCities Institute http://www.newcities.org
Summit City Lounge http://www.summitcitylounge.com/
Uniquely Morehead http://www.uniquelymorehead.com/
31
Youth
It’s gonna be the next generation that makes a decision that this is where they want to spend their lives and what they want to be doing, to
build this new economy. And they’re gonna need help from the state government, the federal government, who need to direct resources
to feed these very special individuals who are willing to do that—who’ve got the talents and the education to do it. -Doug Doerfeld
Youth Build-Jackson, Dana Banks

Stop in, pay a reasonable price, take your assigned seat, and play a game
of Halo for a few hours. You have entered the business plan of Thomas
Fugate, a second year student at Youth Build-Jackson.
“I’m still thinking, but it’s going to happen,” Thomas says with quiet de-
termination.
Thomas is 22 years old, a resident of Jackson in Breathitt County. He is

hoping his future gaming café will provide job opportunities, help boost
the local economy, and perhaps most importantly, give local youth a place
to go in town.
Dana Banks, the Education Coordinator at Youth Build-Jackson, is taking

Thomas’s ideas seriously. Banks works with Thomas and 14 other local young people to develop their math, reading and entre-
preneurial skills. “We’ve tried to do a group forum [to ask], ‘What would you do to better improve your community?’...Their
ideas are important,” Dana says.
With a well-rounded, intensive curriculum and supportive staff, Youth Build itself has become a place where Breathitt youth can
go. The program, which takes at least one year to complete, offers courses that lead to obtainment of a GED in conjunction with
classroom and on-site construction training. Students are also required to complete 900 hours of community service and spend
32
one day a week at the Job Corps construction site learning a trade.
“They’re constantly doing something. Once you’re in the program you’re in it. We stay in contact with them on the phones, on
the Internet, email. We try to be here through a lot of mentoring, a lot of counseling,” Dana says.
Once a booming coal county, Breathitt came to the end of its profitable coal days in the 1980s. Miners from Breathitt County
now drive over to Perry County for work. Opportunities for employment in the area are few. Faced with generational poverty
common to the surrounding areas of Jackson, many kids do not make it through the public school system. They are left with very
few options for relief from hardship. “I wouldn’t say that drugs lead a population to drop out of school. I think that once they
drop out of school, drugs are there for them. And there’s nothing here for kids,” Dana says.
Students at Youth Build are not giving up on their community, though; Banks says that about 98% of Youth Build’s students
in the last couple of years have decided to stay. “A lot of our students have that Appalachian culture…and don’t want to leave.
That’s why we really push school, and try to push medical, nursing or something,” Dana says. The largest employers in town are
the hospital and the community college. Understanding construction is a useful skill that has also allowed many Youth Build
graduates to find work.
Youth Build does not stop there; it also provides Individual Development Accounts (IDA), which offers $4,000 to students who
have saved $800 so that they can start a business, put down on a house, or go to school. IDA, coupled with entrepreneurship
classes offered by Youth Build USA, may provide a foundation for success for youth like Thomas and his peers.
Beyond the concrete skills and financial aid they receive, youth with this type of support and encouragement can, like Thomas,
develop ideas for improving their home communities and develop the confidence to see those through. They just might be the
visionaries that will pull towns like Jackson through an economic transition crucial to the community’s future and to the quality
of life of its local residents.
Staying Together Appalachian

Youth: The STAY Project
Janney Lockman, a young woman from West Virginia, has found inspiration
by being around other youth in Whitesburg who are looking for ways to stay
in the area. She loves her home in West Virginia, “But sometimes I have a hard time imagining what my role could be there as
an adult,” she explains.
Young people are particularly affected in a poor economy, and their unique challenges are often overlooked, as they have few op-
portunities to have their voices heard. Finding other youth facing similar problems and who have the determination to overcome
parallel challenges can be crucial to a young person’s resolve.
In 2007, Appalachian youth came together at the annual Appalachian Studies Association Conference to talk. In an hour of in-
tense conversation, they asked each other, “What do we care about in our communities? What needs to change? What are some
of the solutions that can come out of this?”
“It really came out during the Appalachian Studies Conference that we were all really frustrated and that we all really wanted to
be in the region and make things happen in the region, but how hard it was to really do that,” Ada Smith recalls. At the time,
Ada and many of the others participating in the conference were forced to decide between getting an education and the jobs they
wanted or staying in the region they loved.
The STAY Project developed out of these discussions, and soon became an intergenerational collaboration as youth found allies
33
in the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, the Appalachian Media Institute in Kentucky, and High Rocks
for Girls in West Virginia.
By 2009, the STAY Project had organized its first gathering. Joe Tolbert, a young multidisciplinary performing artist from Knox-
ville, Tennessee who has been integral to the STAY project recalls the gathering. “It was empowering, because we were in a youth
led space, and youth could talk freely of their experiences and really be themselves.” The meeting, he says, “gave a common sense
of purpose, and I think it showed that no matter what issues and things we face that they are all connected and that it takes us
working as a unit to get at the root cause of the issues we face in our community.”
Now, the STAY Project hopes to build opportunities for youth so that they are able to gain the skills to make their visions for
the area into a reality. “The STAY Project can offer the chance that we’re not losing some of the most promising leaders of our
region to the sheer fact that you can’t get a job here and you can’t get a good education, or you don’t feel okay raising a family
here,” Ada says.
Janney hopes to dedicate some of her time in the fall to becoming a point person for the STAY project, which will help to sustain
the network and strengthen it. The founders hope to foster participation among a wide and diverse cross section of Appalachian
youth, who will shape the movement to respect all peoples’ right to stay in Appalachia.
Ada Smith
Only in her early twenties, Ada Smith has an appreciation for her
family’s history. “To me Letcher County is home,” says Ada. Her
father and his parents were also raised in Letcher County. That
generational continuity, the sense of place her family has instilled
in her, and a taste of the world outside of Letcher County have
provided Ada with a complex understanding of her home.
Just as long family lineages are a part of Appalachian culture, so is

emigration. People have been leaving Appalachia since the 1800s, to see other parts of the world, to get an education, and
mostly, to find work. “We’re forced to leave,” Ada says.
Like others, Ada left Eastern Kentucky to go to college in the Northeast. “Being at Hampshire [College] made me under-
stand more what it meant to be from this region and the perceptions and stereotypes that were still alive,” she reflects. Ada
found that places like Boston or Detroit have reliable infrastructure, and so their inhabitants experience poverty differently.
City-dwellers don’t necessarily understand that solutions that work in urban centers might not work in Letcher County.
“People don’t get it in this nation, that there are actually regions in this nation that are like this,” Ada says, describing con-
versations she has had again and again. “It’d be really nice to be in a region that had the basic needs [met] and structures that
the rest of the nation has…whether that’s sewer, whether that’s water, whether that’s adequate healthcare,” she says.
Rather than leave again, as many of her peers have decided to do, Ada hopes that she can stay in Letcher County now that
she is back from college. She has high hopes for finding a job that will allow her to do that. It is something she wants for
everyone: “My vision is that people who want to be here and want to be having any job they want can create that and see
that opportunity, no matter what the age is,” she says.

Through her participation in the STAY Project, Ada wants to create new options for people to make connections to Central
Appalachia. She wants to shift today’s reality that causes many youth to say, “‘I’m going to leave and I’m never coming back,’
just because that’s what you do,” Ada says. Hopefully as they connect to each other, more young people will have the con-
fidence to stay. Ada hopes people of all ages can learn together and support one another, and she is committed to including
34
people who might have a particularly hard time staying—making sure youth of different races or sexual orientations have
a strong voice in the network.
One of the many goals of the Stay Project is to allow people to develop a sense of identity. “I have a vision of people try-
ing to respect and honor their culture and history and really having an understanding of what that means. To me, that is
understanding what it means to be Appalachian,” Ada says. Learning how to claim that identity and shape it through this
transition will be a challenge for Ada and all other youth working in their communities.
Dillon Fisher
Several years ago, Whitesburg youth organized an unusual activity in the com-
munity. Once a week, community spaces were packed with teens who, amidst
the chaos and clamor of a punk rock show, began to form connections to the
music and each other. They were called youth board shows. Youth came together
weekly to put together and then enjoy the shows at various places in town. They
featured local bands and bands travelling through, some of them on their way to
becoming big time hits.
Dillon Fisher, now twenty, began attending the youth board shows at age four-
teen. If it were not for youth board shows, he says, he would not be the same
person he is now. “I wouldn’t have this admiration for this place…I’ve seen
Whitesburg—what it could be with shows. I’ve seen something that was ex-
tremely solid,” Dillon says.
According to Dillon, youth board shows brought people from local areas together
in a show of unity. “It showed that there can be something here,” he says.
Growing up in Whitesburg has been a “double-edged sword” for Dillon. He has travelled enough to know that he wants to stay
in Whitesburg. “I think Whitesburg’s one in a million,” he says. “This is my place.” But he has also recognized that he will need
to work to make Whitesburg a place where he can stay.
Besides going into the medical field, “coal mining is roughly the only job that I’m completely aware of that you can stay around
here for,” he says. “To me [coal mining is] a job where not every day is promised, and I couldn’t have a job with that much stress
involved.”
So Dillon is taking his father’s words to heart. In New York, his father says, everything is already built up. “Whitesburg still has
plenty of opportunity, and that’s something you need to strive on…if you were to go out, get an education, and then bring that
degree back to Whitesburg and put something there, you can be doing a lot of good not just for yourself but for this community,
too.”
“I always thought that was pretty powerful,” Dillon smiles.
Dillon is not sure what he will do with the business degree that he is working towards right now, but he has ideas of opening a
record store in Whitesburg, and he would like to see a return of more frequent concerts in the area. “I would like to try to find
a place [to start having the concerts again]…somewhere to where kids can come, all ages. …It’s hard to get in touch with the
youth,” he says.
The way Dillon sees it, there will not be any one solution—everyone appreciates something different. But he wants to help bring
something to Whitesburg that people can enjoy. Whether he creates opportunities for jobs or just something to do, give Dillon
a few years. He may have some answers for Whitesburg.
35
Samantha Sparkman
The federal government has recently allocated billions of
dollars toward improving Internet access in communities
throughout the U.S. But many communities still do not
have access to these improvements. Samantha Sparkman’s
community in Letcher County, Kentucky was one of them,
until recently.
Samantha, a physical therapy student, has plenty of frus-

trating stories to tell about using dial-up Internet, especial-
ly when trying to get her work done. “If the teacher puts a
video up, [I have to] go and get the video started loading,
go put a load of laundry in, put it in the dryer, fold it, start
another load, come back and check the Internet. Then go
and try to do something else, then try to watch it. [That is],
if the Internet has not cut out on you by that time, and you
lose it all, start all over again,” she says.
Patience using dial-up has been good training for the pa-
tience Samantha would need to help secure broadband In-
ternet for her area, a mission she has devoted a good portion of her time to for over a year now. “To get much of anything done
you have to make a stink…Hard work does pay off. And determination. And just pestering them until you get what you want,”
she explains.
As part of their campaign for broadband, Samantha and her collaborators created videos for YouTube to spread awareness about
their difficulties. They are posted on the ironically named website dialuprocks.org.
Samantha hopes to bring broadband and other improvements to her community, because she wants to stay in the area in which
she was raised. She cannot imagine venturing more than 50 or 100 miles from her home. “There’s just some kind of safety in
these mountains. …I just think it’s so beautiful and there’s just so much here to love,” she says.
The broadband project has been a hard-fought battle for Samantha. She got involved through the Pine Mountain Settlement
School in the summer of 2009 because she thought the campaign would give her something to do while not working a steady job.
“Just to be honest, I thought it would blow over in a few months, or that we would get it in a few months. I didn’t know it would
be a yearlong battle.” But the work has paid off. Samantha will finally be getting a high-speed boost to her homework routine:
she and her group have found someone with both the equipment and the willingness to bring broadband into the community.
“Randal Caudill was excited about doing it. He was like, ‘I want to help you all. I’ve got towers. Let’s do this,’” she recalls.
What is Samantha’s advice for bringing about change on the local level? “Don’t take no for an answer. Pester someone until they
give you what you want, basically. And I think it takes more than one person to do it. I mean, one person can do a lot of things,
but then again, they can’t. If it had just been me complaining about the Internet, I would have never got it. But when you get 60
or 80, people will listen. Especially in a small community, 60 or 80 people is a big deal.”
Overall, what Samantha has learned from this broadband project is that with the support of the community, success can be
achieved. “It will happen. It has to happen. Hard work does pay off,” she says.
36
Cecily Howell
Bumping along the roads on the way to school, Cecily often slept
on the long bus ride through the hollow where she grew up. “When
I was a kid…I’m just like, ‘Well, I’m going to go to sleep through
Mud Creek on the bus because there’s not much to see,’” she re-
members.
Now, when Cecily walks through Mud Creek she sees a lot. “The
creeks need to be cleaned, but it’s beautiful…It just needs some
love—some cleaning up.” She sees potential.
Cecily’s perspective started shifting in high school, when she de-

cided to start actively observing her community, intending to even-
tually become part of the solution rather than continuing to be
part of the problem. When one of her art teachers at Morehead
State University asked her class to interview their family members for an assignment, Cecily’s observations and ideas were further
solidified.
The knowledge of her community’s history has served as a foundation for imagining the future: people finishing high school and
going to college; family roles preserved so that parents are parents and kids are allowed to be kids; trash gone from the hollow
and creek beds; a recycling program.
To get there, Cecily hopes to build a community center, combining many approaches to confronting multiple issues in Mud
Creek. She pictures an energy efficient art center with a gallery, a drug treatment center with therapy, and jobs and internships
where people can learn skills. Inspiration and new ideas emerge everywhere, shaping her vision of the center.
In the meantime, Cecily hopes to find others in her community who want to work with her. She believes in force in numbers,
and she sees plenty of numbers. “There are hollows full of people who are related to each other. If any of us have an issue, they’ll
gladly open their door and let us stay there,” she says. She wants to encourage that sense of connectivity and solidarity amongst
Mud Creek community members beyond familial relations, so that people stop settling for polluted creeks and dilapidated roads,
rundown by coal trucks and neglected by the government.
“[People have] accepted it,” she says. “Everyone hates the roads but no one says anything about it because I guess they think that
nothing’s going to happen…[People say], ‘Well, no one’s willing to do anything about it, so we just live with it.’”
But Cecily does not want to live with it forever. She sketches her ideal Mud Creek in 2030 and points to an image of herself. “I’m
just standing here like, ‘Yay!’ Just awed in amazement,” she beams.

The Stay Project http://www.highlandercenter.org/view/view-033.htm#stay
YouthBuild Jackson, Jackson, KY http://www.youthbuildhazard.org
37
Appendix A
Visioning and Tools for Organizing
It can be helpful to begin by imagining the futures we’d like to see and discussing our ideal visions with others. Here’s a visioning
exercise to try by yourself or with a group, followed by a few tools to bring your vision(s) to the next step.6
Step One: Individual Goal Statements
We are imagining Central Appalachia as “the best it can be” for 2030 (20 years out). State three social, cultural, or economic
“achievements” that you would like to see realized in Central Appalachia 20 years from now. BE VERY SPECIFIC, CON-
CRETE, and DAY-TO-DAY, e.g. rather than “peace on earth and an end to violence,” state those goals in meaningful, personal
terms, such as “anyone can walk anywhere, anytime, and feel totally safe.”
1)
2)
3)
Step Two: Visioning
With your goal statements in mind, you will now step into the world of 2030—a 2030 in which all the goals you wrote down
(twenty years ago in 2010) have been achieved: all your best hopes for the future have been realized.
Imagine (it might even help to close your eyes) yourself awakening from a deep and refreshing sleep; you find yourself lying on
your back in soft grass. You feel sun on your face; looking up, you see blue sky and clouds moving. The breeze smells fresh. Sitting,
you realize you are on the crest of a hill. Nearby you see a hedge with an arched, white gate. You walk up to it, put your hand on
the latch, lift it, and pause—anything could be on the other side. You push, and walk through the gate into the morning of (fill
in with appropriate day/month) 2030.
You look down the hill, and realize that it’s true: every goal, every hope you had for 2030 has been achieved. 2030 is so differ-
ent from 2010! What do you see? Hear? Smell? You walk down the hill, further into this changed world. What is a day in 2030
like?
Look for evidence that this world actually represents a way of life that incorporates your goals of twenty years ago. What are
people doing—the children, the elderly, the middle-aged, the men, the women? What kind of household groupings do you find,
what kind of buildings; what is the physical environment like? Can you identify neighborhoods? Are there cities? What kinds of
occupations do you see people following? Is anyone playing? How do they play? What are you doing in 2030?
REMEMBER: You have brought your best hopes with you.
Draw, diagram, write or otherwise represent a summary of your vision.
*****
Look back at your drawing: What does the workplace look like? Are people working together? Where do they get their food and
water? How do people exchange goods and services? What happens when people don’t have enough of what they need? What do
38
people see when they look at Central Appalachia from the outside? Can you tell how community decisions are made, how people
travel, make connections across distances? How do people of different ages learn new things? How are conflicts and differences
handled? Where and how do people interact? What are their relationships like?
Take a minute to add anything you’ve left out.
Circle or list the things in your vision that you are already doing in 2010. Mark the things other people in your community are
already doing. Put a star next to things you might want to do in the next twenty years.
Share your vision or reflect by yourself. Was this activity hard? How did it feel?
Step Three: Bringing it to the group, and to the present
After coming up with individual visions and sharing them, we begin to see common themes that bridge our visions with those of
others. Using these connections, groups and communities can work together to create and carry out plans for moving our com-
munities closer to our visions, step by step.
Visioning on the community level, and deciding how to collectively accomplish a vision, is a process. Whether you are expe-
rienced at facilitating meetings or not, we encourage you to try these activities with new or familiar groups of people. Start a
group that meets weekly or monthly, and rotate who facilitates the meetings. Different people will enjoy different activities and
frameworks, but it can help to have a tool (or many) to promote participatory and evaluative conversation.
Here are some activities you can try with your group.They have been adapted from sources listed at the back of this appendix.
What do these terms have in common?
Sustainable economic development focuses on correcting the overuse of our natural resources.
Asset-based development harnesses the strengths specific to our local communities for the sake of local development.
Place-based development works according to possibilities and limitations of a particular place and is rooted in local social,
environmental, and economic returns on local investments.
Solidarity economy creates strategies aiming to humanize the economy and to develop social safety nets to supplement the
dominant economy.
These terms are slightly different, but generally aim to create positive solutions to gaps created by a globalizing, commercial
economy that recognizes profit as the sole determinant for distribution of market production, services, prices and wages. Stud-
ied together, these terms suggest that a combination of principles based on inward, positive development, local organizing and
participation, and connection between humans and between humans and their environment could lead to a more nuanced,
sustainable, and rights-based economic system.
39
7
Map of Solidarity Economy
This map can be used in a number of ways. By itself it is a resource showing concrete ways that people throughout the world
have begun “localizing” and strengthening their economies by building relationships with their place, with other businesses, with
community members and consumers, between employees and workers, and with other communities and networks.
In a group, you can use this map as a tool for creating next steps. It may be helpful to think of this step as goal making. Looking
at the map, which components seem to correspond with your group’s visions? Which seem most attainable/feasible/achievable
for your community?
40
You may also want to try using the map another way. Your group can create its own map by filling in the center with needs to
be met by 2030 (based on your visions) and imagining your own methods for creation, production, exchange/transfer, consump-
tion/use, and surplus allocation. This may allow your group to think outside the box!
For example, when we tried this with a small group of people profiled in the report, they added the “evaluation” section as shown
in the image. They also identified that currently, the greatest need in Eastern Kentucky is cultural (re)creation—methods of edu-
cation and knowledge and idea exchange that would help rediscover a culture that values local history, people, and places.
41
8
Constraints and Possibilities
Either by using the solidarity economy map, or through some other means, your group has a concrete, collective vision. What
are your steps towards accomplishing it? How will you get from today to 2030?
The next step is to talk about how to accomplish and spread some part of your vision.
Oftentimes, we can get caught up in the constraints that prevent us from meeting our visions. After all, there are valid, over-
whelming reasons as to why we are held back from the realities we want to see. The activity above provides one tool to start seeing
constraints as possibilities. Taking the goal of creating a community market, what are the constraints, and for every constraint,
what are the possibilities?
CONSTRAINTS POSSIBILITIES
Create Community Market

What does community want, what kind of
market will be used?
Community survey to gauge interests, needs,
and ideas for a market
Need people to process overwhelming survey
responses
Data compilation/processing party to get
more volunteers involved
Lack of resources/experience to create success-
ful market based on needs
Contact extension agent to help secure a loca-
tion and help gather other information and
No place for the market resources
Access available tobacco settlement funds

Need money to rent market location
Divide costs evenly amongst producers and

create decision-making council to encourage
participation/equal ownership
42
9
Asset Assessment: The Glass is Half Empty and Half Full
Hopefully this report, along with the tools provided, has been an illustration of a certain kind of philosophy towards commu-
nity development – that is asset assessment rather than solely needs assessment. While problems exist in every community, a
community will grow stronger as community leaders focus on discovering, supporting, connecting, and growing assets in their
community.
Such community development will be most effective if it starts with individual skill inventories, moving outwards towards ex-
isting associations, such as social and civic clubs, and then institutions, which can add valuable support to asset development.
Community leaders can use such a process of inventory to provide more appropriate resources to individuals and also, to create
connections between skills, people, groups, and institutions that will create sustainable community development.
For more information on asset based community development and for other activities to add to your toolbox, refer to any of the
following resources:
Organizer’s Workbook and other resources from GINI

http://ourblocks.net/organizers-workbook-and-other-resources-from-gini/
The Asset-Based Community Development Institute: School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
http://www.abcdinstitute.org/resources/
“Vitalizing Communities”: Building on Assets and Mobilizing for Collective Action, Community Guide created for The Cen-
ter for Applied Rural Innovation
http://utahlinks.org/rp/docs/VitalComm.pdf
The Popular Education News

http://www.popednews.org/resources.html
National School Reform Faculty Materials

http://www.nsrfharmony.org/protocol/index.html
Appendix B
Suggestions and advice in the words of Kentuckians
Trust your vision and do what you want to do…trusting your vision of what’s possible and what your community needs and
wants. (Amelia Kirby)
There are people you can get a hold of to help you understand how to make something happen…I think a lot of people are
worried about aggravating somebody. You have to be willing to just get over that. Just be willing to email somebody out of the
blue or call somebody out of the blue and ask them a question…Go visit something that’s similar to what you’re wanting to do.
(Nathan Hall)
Seek out a mentor and educate yourself…you just have to make your own thing happen…that would be it: resources and a men-
tor. I would go to somebody that is doing what you want to do. (Beth Tillery)
43
I have to love it or I can’t do it. I could not be an undertaker, there is no way. And I am not going to grow okra because I hate
it…For me, I got to love what I do and I do what I love. (Beth Tillery)
We tell [people], “If you’re in it for making a lot of money, that’s probably not the right reason to go into business.”…It’s, “How
can I change my life and do something I really want to do?” Those are the ones that are much more successful. (Regina Beck-
nell)
Start at the county agent…If you’re just a plain old person like me, a farmer that doesn’t know anything or anybody…You have to
have somebody that’s knowledgeable. …Our whole extension agency here—very involved in community, not just agriculture—
They’re involved trying to get things going…They really work hard at trying to improve the quality of life here. (Beth Tillery)
You have to start small. Just watching how [this bookstore] has evolved, everything grows really slowly. It just does. I watched
people open restaurants and they’ll spend months working on the décor before they open. I don’t think people care. You don’t
want it to be dirty, but think of all the restaurants…Some of the best restaurants and the best places to hang are dumps. I think
that sometimes…there’s a perception that oh, it has to be a really nice place. Everything has to match and it all has to be new.
(Susan Thomas)
You have to draw an interest. And it’s not just the people walking in your door. It could be collaborating with somebody else who
does something similar to you. (Regina Becknell)
One week, one person would have to lift everybody up and the next week the other person would be in a good mood and they’d,
“Well, now we’re this far, we just…”So each week it seemed like somebody had that role, not assigned, just happened. (Beth
Tillery)
People want to do business with people they like and people they know. … It’s very hard to run a business if you can’t get out
there and promote it and sell it. (Regina Becknell)
One of the reasons I’m going [to ATI/MACED/KFTC gatherings] is to try and plug in more. I hate to sound mercenary, but
especially with folks who have the ability to fund projects in this region or be connected to other funded sources…there’s always
room for more networking and connecting and things. (Nathan Hall)
Facebook, bumper stickers, radio promotion, t-shirts—our Facebook page has really probably done as much as anything because
people who are connected are connected to it. So they’ll know; we’ll put in if a local business is having a sale, or if a local business
is opening, like a new local business. (Susan Thomas)
Many of the most successful businesses in the world are on the Internet! It’s how they make the majority of their money. So we
try to teach…that the world and the market is not just a block or a town or an area of a development district. It’s not the whole
world, but you have to try to go out and find it. (Regina Becknell)
You can give them that personal “Hi, Joe.” … People will pay a little bit more if they know that when they go in and out, they
can get what they want and they won’t have to worry, stand in line, or any of those other things…go on with their lives, or have
it delivered. There’s so many little perks that businesses can do to make them compete against these larger bulk stores. (Regina
Becknell)
You make it and you do it by the way you arrange it and by literally inviting people in. (Susan Thomas)
44
Resources - Places to Get Started

Skills and Information Sharing: Arts and Culture
The Appalachian Artisan Center Hindman, KY, http://www.artisancenter.net/
Dedicated to building and strengthening an arts-based economic sector through education, business development and support
services for artists.
Appalshop Media Institute Whitesburg, KY, http://appalshop.org/

A non-profit multi-disciplinary arts and education center in the heart of Appalachia producing original films, video, theater,
music and spoken-word recordings, radio, photography, multimedia, and books. Our education and training programs support
communities’ efforts to solve their own problems in a just and equitable way.
The Hindman Settlement School, Knott County, KY http://www.hindmansettlement.org/

Provides educational and service opportunities for the people of the mountains while keeping them mindful of their heritage.
Offers both tours and workshops on Appalachian life and culture.
The Mountain Arts Center Prestonsburg, KY, http://macarts.com/

Provides a venue for bluegrass, gospel, rock, and country music. Has also hosted conventions, large and small meetings, recep-
tions, catered dinners, as well as interactive video conferencing and offers diverse educational programming.
Oil Springs Cultural Arts and Recreation (OSCAR) Center, Johnson County, KY 606-789-8108
Serves as a regional arts educational center. Classes include spinning, weaving, quilting, pottery, woodcarving, painting heritage
art, recycled art, dance, music and drama.
Summit City Lounge, Whitesburg, KY http://www.summitcitylounge.com/

Believes that small, community-centered, locally-owned businesses are vital to healthy communities. Committed to fresh, deli-
cious food, to using local ingredients when possible, to small breweries and distilleries, to mountain art and music, and to bring-
ing people together. Local art and music venue!
Skills and Information Sharing: Food and Health

Appalachian Alternative Agriculture of Jackson County (3AJC), Jackson County, KY 606-493-7058
Opened a new incubator kitchen for caterers, food processing businesses and individuals, and anyone who wants to can large
quantities of food from any of the surrounding counties. Also open for those who want to observe and learn.
Appalachian Sustainable Development http://www.asdevelop.org

Works in the Appalachian region of Virginia and Tennessee to link consumers with farmers and producers and provides hands-on
opportunities for learning, advocacy and civic engagement.
Birth True Childbirth Ed., Hindman, KY http://birthtrue.wordpress.com/

Offers childbirth classes and labor support (doula services) to the women of southeastern Kentucky. Also see birthtrueblog.word-
press.com for information related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Grow Appalachia Berea, KY, http://www.berea.edu/appalachiancenter/growappalachia

Teaches and supports the people of Appalachia in addressing the tragedy of hunger in the region by learning to grow their own
food to feed themselves.
Pine Mountain Settlement School, Letcher County, KY http://www.pinemountainsettlementschool.com/

45
Provides instruction in environmental education and traditional arts and culture.
Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) http://www.ssawg.org/

Provides learning opportunities in sustainable agriculture, tools and support for farmer entrepreneurs, farm policy education, and
fosters community food systems and security.
Sustainable Morehead, Morehead, KY http://www.sustainablemorehead.org/

Aims to further sustainable living in the Morehead and surrounding Appalachian region through education, demonstration proj-
ects and activities that are based on the interrelationship of personal, social and environmental health.
Skills and Information Sharing: Business and Leadership

Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, Berea and Paintsville, KY http://maced.org/
Provides financial investments and technical assistance that helps local people and communities prosper, conducts research to
inform and support good public policy that is inclusive and considers everyone affected, and crafts effective development tools to
retain the natural resources and wealth Appalachian communities are losing today.
Sequestering Carbon, Accelerating Local Economies (SCALE), Abingdon, VA, 276 628-4727, flaccavento@ruralscale.com
Consulting and public speaking and workshop services designed for community leaders, farmers, small businesses and nonprofit
practitioners who are engaged in working towards sustainable economic development initiatives in Central Appalachia.
Small Business Development Centers http://www.bplans.com/sbdc/#Kentucky

An excellent resource for businesses, offering high quality professional advice at very low prices or for free.
Sustainable Energy Training Series http://kysolar.org/news?news_uid=13&group_id=0

Offers 13 workshops on topics related to solar energy and residential energy conservation. Oriented towards professionals seeking
to expand their knowledge and the scope of services they offer, as well as others interested in learning more about these fields.
YouthBuild Jackson, Jackson, KY http://www.youthbuildhazard.org

Offers job skills and on-the-job training, in addition to GED preparation, basic computer skills, and life skills programs and
activities. For youth ages 16-24 who need their GED or High School Diploma and have a desire to enter college, job placement,
or both at program’s end.
Networks: Connecting to Power

Appalachian Transition Initiative http://appalachiantransition.net
Devoted to ideas for a more just, sustainable and prosperous future in Central Appalachia and talking about the coming transi-
tion of the economy, workforce, and communities.
Central Appalachian Network (CAN) http://www.cannetwork.org/

A network of seven nonprofits that has both technical and organizational expertise and a strong history of peer learning. Members
strategies that focus on building partnerships, performing research and public education, developing policy and infrastructure,
supporting entrepreneurs, providing technical and business assistance, and building value-added assets.
The Community Farm Alliance, Frankfurt, KY http://www.communityfarmalliance.org/index.html

Organizes and encourages cooperation among farmers, rural, and urban citizens, through leadership development and grassroots
democratic processes, to ensure an essential, prosperous place for family-scale agriculture in Kentucky economies and communi-
ties.
Kentuckians For The Commonwealth http://www.kftc.org/

A statewide citizens organization working for a new balance of power and a just society. As we work together we build our
strength, individually and as a group, and we find solutions to real life problems. We use direct action to challenge—and
change—unfair political, economic and social systems.
46
NewCities Institute http://www.newcities.org

Making an intensive effort to engage participating communities’ citizens to build a roadmap for the future. Builds economic and
social prosperity from the bottom up by engaging, listening, empowering, envisioning, distilling values, innovating, and taking
action!
The Stay Project http://www.highlandercenter.org/view/view-033.htm#stay

A collaboration of Appalshop Media Institute, High Rocks for Girls, and the Highlander Research and Education Center; a
diverse regional network of young people working together to create, advocate for, and participate in safe, sustainable, engaging
and inclusive communities throughout Appalachia and beyond.
Uniquely Morehead, Morehead, KY, http://www.uniquelymorehead.com/

A campaign by a coalition of local, Morehead businesses, advocating political and consumer support for independent, locally-
owned businesses wherever and whenever possible.
Energy and Housing

Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises, Green Initiatives, Berea, KY http://www.fahe.org/about-us
Allows affordable housing providers to share experiences, form a unified voice, and share access to resources to develop quality
housing.
Frontier Housing, Green Solutions, Morehead, KY http://www.frontierhousing.org/green/index.htm

Increases energy efficiency by utilizing environmentally friendly materials and techniques. Our goal is to provide technical, finan-
cial and educational assistance to homeowners to improve each home’s energy efficiency by at least 20%.
Genesis Development of Kentucky, Elkhorn City, KY http://www.genesisdevelopment.us/

Kentucky’s first green energy company. Seeks to enter long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with companies and individu-
als who own title to reclaimed/abandoned mine land, and targets regional electric utilities for the bulk sale of electricity generated
from its green energy projects.
Low Income Housing Coalition of Eastern Kentucky (LINKS), Printer, KY http://www.linkshousing.org

Offers a variety of programs to a five-county area in the Big Sandy Valley, including small loans at low interest rates, home repairs
by volunteer groups, certified credit counseling, and new home construction.
People’s Self Help Housing, Inc., Vanceburg, KY http://www.pshhinc.org

Offers green home construction in addition to home repair and weatherization.
Solar Energy Solutions LLCL, Lexington, KY http://www.solar-energy-solutions.com

Welcomes the opportunity to help you explore renewables. From do-it-yourselfers to those needing a full-service installation, we
can make renewable energy work on your terms.
Non-Traditional Funding
Area Development Districts http://www.kcadd.org/
Often funded through tobacco settlement money; may have start-up funding available.
Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, Berea and Paintsville, KY http://maced.org/
Micro-lending up to $35,000 and business loans up to $500,000; special packaging and technical assistance.
Southeast KY Economic Development Corporation (SKED, Somerset, KY http://www.southeastkentucky.com/

Serves 42 counties in Southeast Kentucky. Works directly with individual companies, their consultants and advisors to provide a
wide range of services on a free and confidential basis.
47
Citations
1 U.S. Census Bureau, “State & County QuickFacts,” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/21000.html (Sep. 16, 2010).
2 Milici, Robert C. and Kristin O. Dennen, The National Coal Resource Assessment Overview, “Chapter H: Production and Depletion of
Appalachian and Illinois Basin Coal Resources,” United States Geological Survey, Reston, VA, 2009, http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1625f/down-
loads/ChapterH.pdf, p. 14.
3 McIlmoil, Rory and Evan Hansen, “The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diversification,” Downstream
Strategies, Jan. 19, 2010, http://downstreamstrategies.com/Documents/reports_publication/DownstreamStrategies-DeclineOfCentralAppa-
lachianCoal-FINAL-1-19-10.pdf, (Sep. 16, 2010).
4 A Doula assists women during labor and after childbirth without providing medical assistance. Kelli is currently the only practicing doula
in Eastern Kentucky; Lamaze is an organization which trains educators and supports childbirth education. Kelli provides Lamaze based
classes that teach techniques beyond the traditional breathing exercises.
5 Kelli Haywood, “Cesarean Awareness Radio Documentary,” Birth True Blog, http://birthtrueblog.wordpress.com/cesearean-awareness-
companion-page-for-radio-piece/ (Aug. 31, 2010).
6 Following activity modified from Wendy L. Schultz, “Visions: from the personal to our communities to the world....for 2033,” Infinite
Futures, Feb. 15, 2003, http://www.infinitefutures.com/tools/visnex.shtml# (Sep.27, 2010).
7 Ethan Miller, Solidarity Economy, http://geo.coop/files/Solidarity%20Economy_Circle%20and%20Key.pdf (Sep. 4, 2010).
8 Activity is pulled from Deborah Barndt, Naming the Moment Political Analysis for Action - A Manual for Community Groups, http://
www.popednews.org/resources.html (Sep. 4, 2010).
9 Following is summarized from Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center, “Asset-Based Community Development,” Organizer’s Work-
book, http://www.inrc.org/Assets/docs/workbook/1_abcd.pdf (Sep. 4, 2010).
48
The following coordinated and were respon-

sible for the execution of Voices from Appala-
chia: Kentucky in Transition.
Report Authors: Becky Goncharoff, Elizabeth Aeschli-
mann, Mariela Rich, Vanessa Moll
Report Editors: Alvin Sangsuwangul, Anne West, Ben

Smith, Caitlin Ryan, Diego Rich, Judy Moll, Kazmiera
Nowack, Koni Denham, Maina Handmaker, Meaghan
Winter, Michelle Nguyen, Samantha Sencer-Mura, Steph-
anie Liu
Field Research Team: Becky Goncharoff, Elizabeth Ae-

schlimann, Vanessa Moll
Photographers: Abingdon Organics, Becky Goncharoff,

Dana Banks, Elizabeth Aeschlimann, Highland Research
and Education Center, Karen Combs, Lisa Walters, Mimi
Pickering, Ray Shell, Vanessa Moll
Photography and Layout Editors: Ilana Garcia-Grossman,

Michelle Nguyen
Cover: Cecily Howell
Thank you for feedback, advice, and other invaluable

support from: Ada Smith, Althea Smith, Brenda Cock-
erham, Brighid O’Keane, Cecily Howell, Chandra Moll,
Cody Montgomery, David Ferris, Doug Doerrfeld, Kelli
Haywood, Kristin Tracz, Martin Richards, Philip Man-
gis, Regina Becknell, Richard Moore, Roy Silver, Shayne
Thomas, Tanya Turner, Will Bowling, and all others who
took the time to sit down with us and tell us their stories.
49

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Voices from Appalachia

The Story of Transition - Making Connections 6

Local Business Development 22

Creating Community Spaces 28

Appendix A: Visioning and Tools for Organizing 38

Appendix B: Tips and Resources 43

Comparison of Median Household Incomes and Percentage of Population Below

USA Kentucky Breathitt

Clay Elliot Floyd Harlan Jackson Johnson Knott

The Story of Transition

Making Connections airs on WMMT out of Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Elijah and Guylaine Collett

“I’ve worked in electricity all my life one way or another

If you drive through a thick wooded hollow and spot 51

Frontier Housing Green Rehab Program, Sherrie Davison

Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest, Casey Sterr

East Kentucky Biodiesel, Nathan Hall

In fact, Nathan is on a quest to help discover that hidden potential in

Groups Behind the Stories:

Sequestering Carbon, Accelerating Local Economies,

Cody Black Montgomery

He hopes this conversion to a simpler style of living

Magoffin County. She and her sisters spent much of their

Later in life, he found himself unhappy with the available

Seeing holes in his formal education, Cody has educated

Pine Mountain Settlement School

Situated on the outskirts of Leslie, Harlan, Letcher, and Perry Counties,

While many surrounding community members

Samantha Sparkman, a summer intern with

The Jackson County Regional Food Center, Beth Tillery

Old Homeplace Farm, Will Bowling

Indeed, the Bowling family had no experience running a

Now, Will’s family is on an intentional path towards self-suf-

Groups Behind the Stories:

Local Business Development

Mountain Association for Community Economic

This goal of community development influences the way MACED oper-

Education is the foundation of MACED’s work. In five-week FastTrack

Kaydee’s Kitchen, Alisha Lucas

Oil Springs Culture and Arts Recreation Center,

Birth True Child Education,

Hardwood Designs, Doug Doerrfeld

Groups Behind the Stories:

Creating Community Spaces

CoffeeTree Books, Susan Thomas

When business owners work with their customers and em-

CoffeeTree Books’ employees seem to share that sense of

The NewCities Initiative and Uniquely Morehead

According to Susan Thomas, much of the awareness and activity

Summit City Lounge,

Groups Behind the Stories:

Youth Build-Jackson, Dana Banks

Thomas is 22 years old, a resident of Jackson in Breathitt County. He is

Dana Banks, the Education Coordinator at Youth Build-Jackson, is taking

Staying Together Appalachian

Just as long family lineages are a part of Appalachian culture, so is

“I always thought that was pretty powerful,” Dillon smiles.

Samantha, a physical therapy student, has plenty of frus-

Cecily’s perspective started shifting in high school, when she de-

Groups Behind the Stories:

Step One: Individual Goal Statements

Step Two: Visioning

REMEMBER: You have brought your best hopes with you.