Rural Development

“Back to School Week” is often the most thrilling and the hectic time for students (As a student I have experienced this first hand). The campus atmosphere is filled with excitement, expectation and the ringing of laughter. In between purchasing textbooks and memorizing course schedules students are...

The recently concluded South Dakota State Fair is ‘Still the One!’ The Value Added Agriculture Development Center (VAADC) hosted Value Added Ag Day at the 2012 South Dakota State Fair on August 30th. USDA Rural Development was represented at the tent and State Director Elsie Meeks was on a panel...

Riverhouse Children’s Center in Durango, Colorado strives to provide high quality care and early education services to young children from ages six weeks through five years old. In 2012, the center serves approximately 80 children in its five classrooms. Realizing their current location needed...

The far northern Maine towns of St. Agatha and Frenchville recognize the value of partnership. So when the aging St. Agatha wastewater treatment plant began to have issues, the towns began to work on a solution. That solution was a mutually beneficial partnership with Frenchville, located only six...

Recently, representatives of USDA Rural Development and other federal agencies held a collaboration meeting with the federally recognized tribes of the Ahtna Region, Alaska. The meeting was the fourth in a series of government-to-government Tribal Collaboration Meetings scheduled with tribes in...

What is summer in New York without a visit to the Empire Farm Days? For USDA New York employees, it is an annual tradition. This year we raved about the department’s 150 th Anniversary, talked about all the great things we are doing for New York and (maybe) our team of volunteers had one too many...

Acting Deputy Under Secretary Judith Canales traveled to Texas recently to announce a much needed change to the USDA Rural Development water and wastewater funding process. Canales met with community members and local leaders in the City of Peñitas water treatment plant during her visit, and also...

USDA Rural Development and Housing and Urban Development staff celebrated the building dedication of the first Housing Authority in the nation recently. Started over 50 years ago, the Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing Authority located on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, in South Dakota, hosted...

Mansfield University may be nestled in a tiny town in northern Pennsylvania, but they are moving ground on Phase II of a very big housing project. USDA Rural Development’s Acting Deputy Under Secretary, Judith Canalas and Pennsylvania Rural Development State Director Thomas Williams joined Mansfield...

Earlier this month I joined six other USDA staff members in an American Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED (automated external defibrillator) training session in Bangor, Maine. In addition, 8 other staff was trained at a different facility in Portland, Maine in July. In total 15 staff members were provided...