THE VIRGINIA FOUNDATION FOR COMMUNITY

The rural virginia horseshoe initiative (rvhi), established in 2014, has been renamed to the gerald l. Baliles rural virginia horseshoe initiative award continuing the mission to raise educational attainment levels for students in rural virginia. Rvhi provides career coaches in rural high schools to encourage high school and college completion and offers financial incentives and to assist adult learners return to higher education and training.fourteen rural community colleges participate in the program. The program has two 10-year goals. One is to reduce the number of residents of the rural horseshoe region that have not earned a high school diploma by half, from 20% to 10%. Since 2012, that metric has lowered to 11.9%. The other is to double the population in the rural horseshoe with an associate degree or career certification. In 2012, that percentage was 26%. As of this report, that metric is up to 53.9%.since the program's inception, 91,546 students were served by 28 high school career coaches, either on a one-to-one basis, or in small groups. Thanks to engaged donors, the vfcce provides match funding that is leveraged by local college foundations to support the program.