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OP-ED: Promise Zone keeps pushing for regional progress

SC Promise Zone
Participants worked on an exercise during the December grant-writing workshop.

Participants worked on an exercise during the December grant-writing workshop.

By Andy Brack, Center for a Better South  |  There’s a palpable sense of energy flowing through the six counties of the southern tip of South Carolina in the federally-designated Promise Zone, which is now a year and a half old.

Walk along a downtown street or drive past expanding businesses and you get a tingling that things are happening.  Two years ago, the SouthernCarolina Alliance, lead partner of the Promise Zone, was about the only regional organization that worked to pull people together to develop projects to benefit the area.  Fortunately, the organization had the foresight in 2014 to try to win the Promise Zone designation as a way to bolster inter-agency collaboration and get local, state and federal organizations in silos to come out into the open and work better together. Read more →

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6/29 UPDATE: New grant opportunities, webinars, more

SC Promise Zone

New funding opportunities and resources for the S.C. Lowcountry Promise Zone

logo_updateUPDATE OVERVIEW

In this update, you will find new information and recent news on a variety of topics, including:

RECENT NEWS:   A Bamberg County company is expanding, which will create 50 new jobs.  The Obama Administration has announced nine more Promise Zones.

NEW FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES: The opportunities with fast-approaching deadlines are from the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and Labor.

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES:  Read about three other health-related funding opportunities with deadlines approaching.

RESOURCES:  Take a look at links to a dozen reports that range in helpful subject matter from food hubs to rural income inequality. Read more →

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4/20: USDA seeks applications for $11.7 million in broadband grants for rural communities

SC Promise Zone

USDA LogoWASHINGTON, D.C. – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced that USDA is soliciting applications for grants to establish broadband in unserved rural communities through its Community Connect program. Community Connect is administered by USDA’s Rural Utilities Service and helps to fund broadband deployment into rural communities where it is not economically viable for private sector providers to provide service.

“Through Community Connect and our other telecommunications programs, USDA helps to ensure that rural residents have access to broadband to run businesses, get the most from their education and benefit from the infinite services that fast, reliable broadband provides,” Vilsack said. “USDA is committed to supporting America’s rural communities through targeted investments in our bioeconomy and renewable energy, local and regional food systems, conservation initiatives and rural development.” Read more →

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Press and Standard: Promise Zone already helping

SC Promise Zone

From a Jan. 17, 2016, editorial in The (Walterboro, S.C.) Press and Standard:

16.01.press_and_standard“Congratulations to the City of Walterboro and its residents on receiving over $2 million in Promise Zone funding to upgrade the city’s sewer treatment facilities.

“The grant, which doesn’t have to be paid back, will pay for nearly all of the $3.4 million upgrade. The city also received an additional $500,000 grant from the S.C. Rural Infrastructure Authority, further dropping the price tag. Plus the improvements could generate as many as 129 jobs in the community.

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