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

Search Results: 769 Stories
Image of solar panels at Pomar Junction Winery in Templeton, California

Central Coast Winemaking Family Grows From 19th Century to 21st

On California’s Central Coast, the Merrill family can trace their winemaking heritage back to at least eight generations ago, to even a grape arbor that was planted in the 19th Century. After 30 years of growing grapes at other wineries, Dana and Marsha Merrill and their son… [Read More]
REAP
Hornedeagle Family

Charming and Cozy Describe Home of Aberdeen, S.D. Family

“Our overall feelings toward the home are inexplicable joy and relief.  It feels….like it was time and meant to be….home,” said new homeowner Jennifer Hornedeagle. The Hornedeagle family received a USDA Rural Development Section 502 Direct Single Family Housing packaged… [Read More]
HomeownershipHousing

Charter School Receives Funding for Expansion

Quality education is a key to creating ladders of opportunity for rural students. Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (PVCICS), a regional public charter school located in Hadley, MA has been providing quality education for its students since it’s opening in 2007.… [Read More]
Community Facilities
La Feria Library

City of La Feria Celebrates Library Grant Re-Opening

City of La Feria officials celebrated the Grand Re-Opening of the Bailey H. Dunlap Memorial Public Library. The City of la Feria has a population of 7,302 who will now have access to a state of the art computer lab and community meeting/training room. Mayor Pro-Tem Esmeralda… [Read More]
Community FacilitiesEconomic Development

City of Manning Iowa’s Small Business Community of the Year

With a population of around 1,500 residents, leaders in the southwest Carroll County community of Manning are not striving to become one of the biggest cities in western Iowa, just one of the best. “There has always been something special about Manning and its residents,” said… [Read More]
Economic DevelopmentSmall Business

Claybrook Farms Providing Beef and Jobs

Even though Claybrook Farms had a long standing reputation for its excellent Black Angus cattle breeding operation, the new owner wanted to broaden the farm’s horizon. The Turner family purchased the 700 acre Claybrook Farms in 1975 growing it to over 1,000 acres and adding the… [Read More]
Know Your FarmerLocal FoodsLocal ProduceSustainable/Organic FoodsValue Added
The Clean Energy Biofuels team pose in front of new biodiesel fuel pump

Clean Energy Biofuels Expands Retail Market

Clean Energy Biofuels, a Down to Earth Energy Company, is a full circle biodiesel company operating in Georgia and Tennessee that provides all the services under one company – collecting waste cooking oil, producing the biodiesel, blending the biodiesel, delivering bulk… [Read More]
BiofuelREAP
wall mural

Community Clinic of Maui Offers One-Stop for Healthcare Needs

The Community Clinic of Maui opened its doors in 1993 with only a mid-level provider sharing an office at the Salvation Army, dedicated to serving the poor, uninsured and homeless of Maui. As the community needs exploded, the growing clinic struggled to find space to meet… [Read More]
Community Facilities
Student manually developing 3D design at Lake Country Advanced Knowledge Center, a process that takes days - or even weeks.

Community Excels in Engineering

What happens when businesses are eager to hire local employees, but an equally eager workforce lacks the necessary skills for employment? A stalemate. South Hill and its surrounding region have suffered this dilemma for the last five years with an unemployment rate ranging from… [Read More]
Community FacilitiesEducation
Ribbon cutting for Karuk Tribe's new wireless network

Connected in the Hinterlands: Bringing Broadband to Native Communities in Northern California by Janice Waddell

Orleans, California has no cell service, no high-speed internet, and sometimes not even a reliable landline phone connection. This town of five or six hundred people, nestled along the Klamath River and Six Rivers National Forest, is in the heart of the territory of the Karuk… [Read More]
Community Connect

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