OCRA picks four communities for rural development program
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Four counties in Indiana will be seeing “RED.” That’s the new Rural Empowerment and Development program through the state’s Office of Community and Rural Affairs, which is offering capacity building and planning efforts for the future.
OCRA launched the program in October with the goal of helping rural Indiana communities plan and implement projects to spur economic growth.
The first four areas named to the program are Cass County, Fulton County, Huntington County and Orange County.
Through OCRA, and with help from Ball State University and the Indiana Communities Institute, the four counties will first get help to expand on existing development efforts. A release from OCRA says each county will develop between five and 15 projects.
“Congratulations to these four communities selected to participate in the pilot round of the RED program,” said OCRA Executive Director Duke Bennett in the release. “Our Hoosier communities are special because of the people who turn ideas into action. I look forward to seeing how these counties turn their ideas into action through the RED program.”
This is the inaugural version of the program. It will start in January with a six-month program tailored to each community.
Bennett told Inside INdiana Business in October the program will be complementary to the agency’s existing programs like Stellar Pathways or PreservINg Main Street.
“We believe that [communities will] start doing more strategic planning and go through this process, develop, make sure they have an updated comprehensive plan for the community, make sure that they’ve done individual plans for these projects,” he said. “They check all the boxes that are needed for a lot of the grant funding sources out there. So it kind of moves them along in a more formal way than kind of the way it works now.”
The program will open for applications again in 2025.