像许多人一样，我在飞机上花费了大量的停机时间，并在度假中吞噬了最畅销的讲故事的人约翰·格里森（John Grisham）。尽管约翰的作品始终是一名翻页者，但这是他的现实生活中的叔叔沃恩·格里舍姆（Vaughn Grisham），以及他关于美国农村地区成功的社区和经济发展的故事，对我来说，他们成为了思想转变者。

它在1991年有一天的努力。Then director of the University of Mississippi’s McLean Institute for Community Development, Vaughn vividly recounted what has come to be called “The Tupelo Story” of a community that started its 1940s in economic doldrums but evolved through a collaborative, build-from-the-ground-up strategy into an economically vibrant region over decades. Vaughn’s telling sparked my recognition of community and economic development principles evident in almost every productive and equity-seeking rural development effort I had seen before – and all I have seen since.

这些原则在我自己的思维和做的时候变成了转折点。它们的术语略有不同，由不同的观察者和行动者说。But they all come down to tailoring economic and community development efforts to the local context by understanding a rural community’s or region’s many assets—its “starting point”—and learning how best to connect and leverage those assets to meet and create progressively greater opportunity over time. Though these principles appear straightforward and common sense in theory, putting them into practice requires consistent, thoughtful investment of time and resources – along with a willingness to always learn, and to always seek out and dismantle inequitable practices and behaviors.

下个月，美联储委员会和圣路易斯联邦储备银行将共同发行第一本仅在很长一段时间内出版的有关农村发展的书 - 在这种情况下，由75多名经验丰富的从业者和领导者撰写的章节地面上的农村发展的辛勤工作，以及像我这样努力帮助他们的人。认识到许多农村社区在大流行之前已经面临的不稳定情况，而他们在他们面前的艰苦工作，这项对农村繁荣资源的新投资将突出乡村社区如何在整个社区中的人们中更有可能增加和分享他们的繁荣区域通过使用这些原则进行合作。

阅读有关的全文农村发展由阿斯彭学院的珍妮特·托波斯基（Janet Topolsky）撰写。