RURAL COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE

Research and economic development program:the u.s. Economic development administration (eda) research grants cover two projects that further develop research around rural innovation and urban and rural connectivity. These projects build out rcap's research portfolio with topics important to the rural communities it serves.one of rcap's strategic programs is regional utility collaboration, also known as regionalization. Rcap has been building internal capacity and national awareness to help to support and facilitate these on the ground partnerships so that small systems have an array of options to work with other nearby systems to help be more sustainable and resilient. Rcap supports voluntary partnerships and helps to facilitate regionalization opportunities on a sliding scale from the most informal, such as sharing equipment, to the most formal, such as full physical and/or managerial consolidation and everything in between.rcap's open for business hub helps rural entrepreneurs access free technical assistance and training to help launch and grow their small business. Powered by the wells fargo open for business fund and siegel family endowment, the e-learning hub provides on-demand training, live webinars and one-on-one consulting delivered by rcap's network of regional partners working in 50 states, puerto rico, and the u.s. Virgin islands.and through u.s. Department of trransportation triving communities program through a combination of deep-dive, tailored and trageted ta and capacity building to support tcp communities to elevtae locally drive solutions and innovatiove practices, build regional collaboration and local leadership capacity and advance a pipeline of trnsformative communitiy-driven infrastructure projects and workforce development opportunities to promote connectivity, sustainability, economic opportunity and access to improved services in rurla and tribal communities.