A summit addressing the problems impacting rural communities was held earlier this week in Washington, D.C. One National 4-H representative from Indiana was at that summit to help find solutions to those problems.
“When there aren’t opportunities for [rural] students, they leave and then it’s just like it’s a continuous, compounding problem,” says Maddie Powell of Tipton, referring to the “brain drain” that many rural communities have been experiencing.
Powell serves on the National 4-H Council Young Alumni Advisory Committee (YAAC). She’s also an Agriculture Education major at Purdue University.
Maddie attended the “Rural Communities in Action” summit on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. She says one of the major issues impacting Hoosiers in rural areas is a lack of childcare facilities.
“If you don’t have childcare, then the parents can’t go to work. If your parents can’t go to work, they can’t pay a mortgage, they can’t have a house, and they have to leave. Something so small as a childcare facility has such an impact on that the daily lives of our community.”
She says that ag leaders have been working together to find solutions to these problems—which also includes setting up better broadband and wireless service for those who live out in the country.
Maddie adds that 4-H has long been providing an example of how rural communities can prosper from education and outreach opportunities.
“4-H is definitely a backbone to so many students’ starts,” she says. “I think that the efforts that we’ve talked about at this Rural Community Summit really showed that we’re not alone and that rural communities are just as important as big cities and that there are really big efforts that are being put into place into the future.”
Click BELOW to watch the “Rural Communities in Action” summit that was held Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
