Rural Community Building 101: Shared Identity in Oregon's Applegate Valley

Near the Oregon-California border, the winding Applegate River carves out the Applegate Valley. State highway 238 follows the tributary’s course on its way to join with the Rogue River. Unincorporated communities dot the path through the watershed, its 500 square miles spreading across three counties and two states. Community builders and organizations that call this rural expanse home are subject to different state and county regulations, yet with little representation in any of them.
Prior to forming A Greater Applegate, the area’s leading community building organization, the complicated overlap of geography and government agencies challenged their sense of a shared identity and made advocating for their needs difficult. Now after seven years of community building investments organized around Connections, Capacity, Community-led Action and Community Building Culture, A Greater Applegate has become the mechanism for residents to test new ideas and organize around community needs.
This video recounts lessons learned over their time as the area’s first community building organization, imbued with the pride of two long-time community builders in the Applegate Valley region. Listen for inspiration, familiarity and the comfort of knowing that while community building takes time - it’s worth it.
See AGreaterApplegate.org to learn about how this organization catalyzes community-led action to improve the well-being of all residents.
Learn more about community building and The Ford Family Foundation at tfff.org.

[@karinlarsen2431]

What a lovely presentation by lovely people. I liked the notion of “developing the language to talk to a community that hasn’t exercised it’s community… muscles” is a incredibly hopeful attitude.