CIRA: Center for Integrating Research and Action @ UNC-CH

Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction

The Center for Integrating Research and Action (CIRA) at UNC-Chapel Hill has initiated a multi-year collaboration among community-based organizers and university-based researchers to address root causes of poverty in North Carolina and to generate just and sustainable alternatives. Bringing together grassroots and nonprofit leaders from three regions (representing twelve counties) considered to be "persistently poor," this collaboration is a participatory, collective effort involving solution-based research and coordinated action for policy, social, and cultural change. Participants from the three regions and from UNC-Chapel Hill are working side-by-side to develop action-oriented analyses and theories of the present conditions of each of the twelve counties. The direction of the Collaboration is a work in progress, being mapped and guided equally by multi-issue, community-based nonprofit organizations from each region, including: the Center for Community Action (CCA) in Lumberton, the Concerned Citizens of Tillery (CCT) in Tillery, and the Sustainable Development Program at Appalachian State University (SD-ASU) in Boone, with support from the Appalachian Coalition for Just and Sustainable Communities. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), with strong involvement by the departments of Anthropology, Communication Studies and Public Health, is the fourth partner in the Collaboration.

The particular goals of the Collaboration are threefold: (1) to bring together leaders and stakeholders from the three regions to strategically organize a plan for the social reconstruction and economic development necessary to relieve (and ultimately alleviate) structural poverty in a manner that sustains the environment ; (2) to join the resources of UNC-Chapel Hill and other institutions of higher education (in the state and beyond) with those of particular communities to develop pro-environmental poverty-related programs and policies; and (3) to combine these resources and actions toward sustainable development and poverty reduction to model a more comprehensive and holistic approach to systemic problems caused by the deconstruction of North Carolina’s rural communities, economies and environments.

Following an initial conference in July 2006, regional leaders and university-based allies will convene for day-long meetings in each of the regions, beginning with a gathering at the Center for Community Action in Lumberton in the Fall, and followed by meetings with the Concerned Citizens of Tillery in Tillery, and the Sustainable Development Program at Appalachian State University in Boone, with support from the Appalachian Coalition for Just and Sustainable Communities. These gatherings will address poverty-related concerns specific to each region's counties and provide a forum for the Collaboration to continue to work toward place-based yet coordinated projects, with specific emphasis on agricultural, environmental, educational, socio-cultural, and employment-related arenas and their interlocking challenges and assets. The Collaboration upholds action-research and community participation as guiding principles for this process, as well as alliance-building with government, nonprofit, industry, private business, entrepreneurial, health, and educational sectors.

While spawned and initially supported by CIRA at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Collaboration on Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction is becoming a self-sustaining, self-organized network of activists and researchers in the three regions, charting its own directions and responding to the diverse histories and contingent contexts of each particular region. Throughout the year ahead, the Collaboration will design and hone its research and action goals through the three convenings and their related investigative work. The Collaboration will then join together in Chapel Hill with a broader community of research and activist allies in the summer of 2007 to begin implementing the collectively-defined, regionally-specific solutions.

2006 Conference Participants

Area Wide Health Committee, Tillery, NC
Appalachian Coalition for Just and Sustainable Communities, Ashe County, NC
Center for Community Action, Robeson County, NC
Community Economic Development Fund, Hartford, CT
Concerned Citizens of Tillery, Tillery, NC Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University Department of Anthropology, UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Communications, UNC- Chapel Hill
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, UNC-Chapel Hill
Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Department of Sociology, UNC-Wilmington
NC Conservation Fund, Chapel Hill, NC
NC Housing and Finance Agency
Piedmont Biofuels, Pittsboro, NC
Southern Appalachian Center for Cooperative Ownership, Asheville, NC
Springs Hoke County Community Development Corporation, Raeford, NC
Sustainable Development Program, Appalachian State University

For more information on the conference, visit the 2006 Conference section.

Download a PDF of the Agenda »

Pictures

Pictures from the January 19, 2007 advisory committee meeting at the Community Center of the Concerned Citizens of Tillery, NC. Click on a thumbnail to see the full sized image.