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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is offering its help in the economic recovery planning of the Upper Coastal Plain Council of Governments (COG) through its new internship program, the Carolina Economic Recovery Corps.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is offering its help in the economic recovery planning of the Upper Coastal Plain Council of Governments (COG) through its new internship program, the Carolina Economic Recovery Corps.

The program is sending Ashley Yingling, a second-year graduate student in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ department of city and regional planning in the College of Arts and Sciences, to Wilson for 10 weeks to provide assistance to the Upper Coastal Plain COG. Wilson is working with the municipalities represented by the Upper Coastal Plain COG to help identify and write grant applications.

Most municipalities of the Upper Coastal Plain COG are not qualified to receive entitlement grants due to their small population size. Smaller cities and towns have to apply for funds through a competitive process, rather than receiving a set dollar amount per person.  Yingling is helping these cities, which have staff limitations, apply for these funds. 

Yingling will focus on the Upper Coastal Plain COG’s need for Community Development Block Grants, one type of grant that some of the municipalities remain ineligible for. These grants are used to fund community development projects that include rehabilitation and replacement for housing.

Yingling looks forward to the work she will do this summer in Wilson. Although she didn’t grow up in a small community, both of her parents did.

“I was always interested in smaller communities,” Yingling said. “I will have the chance to learn the policies of how to recover from economic downturn, particularly in smaller communities.”
One of Yingling’s other projects this summer includes evaluating brownfield sites, land formerly used for industrial purposes. The brownfield project is being funded by a grant from the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center. Yingling will help to assess whether the sites can be reused as well as the type of businesses that could reuse them.

Yingling will also participate in an ongoing project with the other interns that will involve inventorying each of the Council of Governments’ funds from the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, part of the national economic stimulus package passed in February. The project will make it easier for the COGs to find out which grants they are eligible for and which municipalities they will compete against to get them.

Yingling is one of nine interns who are participating in the Recovery Corps this summer. The program, funded by the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development and directed by the Office of Economic and Business Development, was implemented by the UNC as one response to the Recovery Act.

Seven of the other participants in the program are taking on individual projects at each of their locations. The interns have been assigned to different councils of government, including those from the areas of Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Research Triangle, Rutherfordton, Washington and Wilmington. There they work with their assigned COGs to come up with economic plans unique to each area. The ninth intern is assigned to the North Carolina League of Municipalities in a coordinating role.

The interns, chosen from a pool of more than 60 well-qualified applicants, include students and graduates of the UNC School of Law, the department of city and regional planning and the UNC School of Social Work.

After the finalists were chosen, they were required to complete an intensive day of training before they could start their work June 1. The training, put on with the help of the N.C. League of Municipalities and the state Council of Governments Association, consisted of instruction on the state’s goals for the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act and presentations that focused on grants that were important to the state. Grant writing for environmentally efficient energy, green jobs and large-scale broadband access were some of the topics.

Office of Economic and Business Development contacts: Jesse White, (919) 843-5454, jwhite@unc.edu; Joshua Levy, (919) 843-5453, jwlevy@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415, susan_houston@unc.edu

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