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Success Stories

A mother and three daughters pose around a dining room table. There are lace curtains and blue wall in the background and some dishes on the table in the foreground.

“This is Home” – A Family Finds Their Forever Home in Calais, Maine

One of the first rooms Heather Gagne and her daughters began redecorating in their new home is the dining room, shown in the top photo. They have been busy repainting and making other updates. Raising a family in coastal Machias, Maine may sound lovely, but for Heather Gagne recent years proved stressful. There were few housing options in their Downeast community, and Heather was glad to find a rental home to…
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Find Stories

Use the filters below to find additional stories about how our programs have helped rural communities across the nation.

Search Results: 163 Stories
Forklift moving a bale of recycling

Doing What Needs to be Done

After moving a bale of recycling, the executive director of FAYCO Enterprises, Inc. jumped down from the newly acquired fork-lift with a skill that revealed it wasn’t her first time at the controls. Doing what needs to be done is how FAYCO operates. As a result, more than 200… [Read More]
Community Facilities
Quest Montessori School

Funding to Help the Expansion of Rural School

Providing necessary and quality education in rural communities is important to create ladders of opportunity for the future generations. Following up on this mission, in 2009 USDA Rural Development gave the Quest Montessori School a $2.4 million Community Facilities loan to… [Read More]
Community FacilitiesEducation
sparks fly as this welding student works

Funding to Technical Colleges Brightens Employment Outlook

Graduates of Vocational and Technical education programs have a cutting edge advantage in today’s competitive job market. They are equipped with specific skills for joining the workforce and their specialized knowledge gains them quality, well-paying jobs. USDA Rural… [Read More]
Community Facilities
USDA funds Greenhouse Cape Cod

Funds Help Build Greenhouse for Nauset Regional Middle School

The Nauset Regional Middle School in Cape Cod, Massachusetts currently has a three-year-old seasonal greenhouse that complements an indoor wet lab where fish and plants are grown. Currently, students are only able to use the greenhouse for a small part of the school year as the… [Read More]
Community FacilitiesEducation

Geothermal Fueled Residence Hall

Outline Of Need: West Chester University is a public university with 15,415 students and 800 academic employees in West Chester, Pennsylvania (Chester County). Demand for student housing is very high, the existing university housing is near full capacity, and much of it is old… [Read More]
Community Facilities
In 2015 USDA Rural Development invested $40,000 to help a nonprofit purchase a new sport utility vehicle and trailer to transport equipment and personnel.

Health in the Hills

In the medically underserved central Appalachian Mountains a much-needed healthful vehicle has been navigating the winding tree-lined roads since 1980. Known as the Health Wagon, today this mobile health unit visits eleven sites in Virginia’s Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell, Lee,… [Read More]
Health CareCommunity Facilities
Platte Health Center

High Quality Health Care Available in Platte, SD

When a patient’s fever raises suspicion of an infection, when an infection is potentially serious or when problems occur with treatment, an infectious disease specialist is usually called in to help. Working concurrently with the patient’s primary care physician, this specialist… [Read More]
Community FacilitiesGrants
C.O.R.E @ the Camptonville Academy's new Personalized Learning resource center, overlooking Ellis Lake in Marysville, California.

Homeschooled Students Find a School to Call Home

In Marysville, California, a unique charter school offers a special opportunity to homeschooled students: teachers and classrooms. C.O.R.E. (Community Options for Resources in Education) @ the Camptonville Academy serves 420 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. They… [Read More]
Community Facilities

Horse Sense Provides Much Needed Therapy

For Pat Moran, one of the co-founders of Seaview Equine Learning Facility (SELF), helping individuals with many special challenges through equine-assisted therapy only makes sense.  It is also her lifetime passion.  The facility provides unmounted and mounted learning… [Read More]
Community Facilities

Innovative Education at Pennsylvania Charter School

Bear Creek Community Charter School at Ten Mile Run in Bear Creek Township, Luzerne County, has such an amazing curriculum that it’s attracting students at an astonishing rate. The school is at full capacity and renovation to the old building is not feasible. The current… [Read More]
Community Facilities

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