community development

The Thrive Rural Framework helps you take stock, target action, and gauge progress on rural prosperity. We invite everyone involved in rural development to use it to spark new ways of thinking and acting to move communities, regions, and systems toward equitable rural prosperity.

This short case study has insights and suggestions for how rural-serving organizations can effectively welcome and truly empower leaders from all backgrounds.

In late May, India was impacted by a severe second wave of the COVID-19. Neera Nundy, Co-founder of Dasra, sprung into action to get support to the most vulnerable communities in the country. 

David Hardy has focused his career on closing educational gaps in school districts across the United States. In years spent working with communities that had been underinvested in, he was always looking deeper at the ecosystem surrounding the children at the schools he was leading.

Businesses owned by people of color tend to be in less profitable industries because of the effects of systemic inequality and racism.

Through the Aspen Young Leaders Fellowship, Kaitlyn Done learned that she had the power to affect change in her community.

Young people of color from places of long-time disinvestment, a history of racist systems, and concentrated poverty are starting from even further back than most.

Small but mighty, rural-serving organizations work in concert with local people, firms and governments to
fill gaps and adapt to do whatever it is communities need done.