Twelve North Carolina towns have been selected as pilot locations for the North Carolina Local Government Service Corps, a team of four spring graduates who will serve as management advisers to some of the most economically distressed communities in the state. The two-year initiative is a partnership between the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Appalachian State University, with advisers coming from the Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs at those schools and UNC-Wilmington.
Twelve North Carolina towns have been selected as pilot locations for the North Carolina Local Government Service Corps, a team of four spring graduates who will serve as management advisers to some of the most economically distressed communities in the state. The two-year initiative is a partnership between the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Appalachian State University, with advisers coming from the Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs at those schools and UNC-Wilmington.
The project is funded by a grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation. The N.C. Rural Economic Development Center and the N.C. League of Municipalities have been active in supporting the Service Corps and shaping its development.
The pilot phase of the Service Corps project will deploy four MPA graduates to work as Golden LEAF management advisers with the selected communities. The management advisers, who will earn their MPA degrees this spring, have received advanced training in economic development, local government management, and proposal writing and grant administration. They will provide hands-on economic development and capacity-building assistance to the selected communities for two years, beginning in August 2009. In addition, public officials in the host communities will receive scholarships to attend regional Essentials of Economic Development workshops offered by the School of Government in partnership with Appalachian State University and other universities as regionally appropriate.
The communities, selected in geographic clusters in order to facilitate one management adviser being able to work with several communities in an area, include Drexel, Hildebran and Rutherford College; Dobson, Boonville and Cooleemee; Star, Candor and Ellerbe; and Bolton, Northwest and Navassa. Each cluster of communities has agreed to share the services of a management adviser and has defined specific projects or priorities to be addressed during the two-year period.
The Golden LEAF management advisers are John Gowan from UNC-Chapel Hill; Elton Daniels from UNC-Wilmington; and Amanda Reid and Tyler Beardsley from Appalachian State University. Will Lambe, associate director of the Community and Economic Development program at the School of Government, is project director for the Service Corps initiative.
Locator map: http://www.multiplotter.com/index.php?map_id=8598&showmap
Community and Economic Development Program contact: Will Lambe, (919) 966-4247, whlambe@sog.unc.edu
School of Government contact: Ellen Bradley, (919) 843-6527, bradley@sog.unc.edu
News Services contact: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415, susan_houston@unc.edu