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Success Stories

A mother and three daughters pose around a dining room table. There are lace curtains and blue wall in the background and some dishes on the table in the foreground.

“This is Home” – A Family Finds Their Forever Home in Calais, Maine

One of the first rooms Heather Gagne and her daughters began redecorating in their new home is the dining room, shown in the top photo. They have been busy repainting and making other updates. Raising a family in coastal Machias, Maine may sound lovely, but for Heather Gagne recent years proved stressful. There were few housing options in the Downeast community, and Heather was glad to find a rental home to…
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Find Stories

Use the filters below to find additional stories about how our programs have helped rural communities across the nation.

Search Results: 183 Stories
Byron Library Chairs

New Community Center, New Library, New Outlook

The Village of Byron, a community of 83, was given a grand opportunity to bring new life back into the community. Through a donation from a local resident it was able to build a much needed community center.  This building would also house the Village Hall and the library.… [Read More]
Nebraska
Community Facilities
Image of Minersville library renovation

New Equipment Revitalizes Small Town Library

Rural libraries often serve as community gathering places. Public voting, educational activities, and more take place in public libraries and the historic library in the Town of Minersville is no different.  Located twenty miles from any other town, the Minersville Public… [Read More]
Utah
Community FacilitiesGrants
Janet Ross of the Four Corners School of Outdoor Education

New Vehicles Help Keep Students Moving for Outdoor Education

For students participating in the Canyon Country Youth Corps (CCYC) at the Four Corners School of Outdoor Education (FCS), a hard hat and shovel prove to be just as useful as a pencil and paper. CCYC is just one of four interrelated programs at the school and participation in it… [Read More]
Utah
Community Facilities
Niobrara Valley Hospital in Lynch, Nebraska.

Niobrara Valley Hospital Pursues Building Upgrade

Niobrara Valley Hospital (NVH) is the only hospital located within Boyd County that has served the communities since 1971. NVH is a 20 bed critical access hospital in Lynch, Nebraska, that currently provides physical therapy, respite care, observation stay, acute care, swing bed… [Read More]
Nebraska
Community Facilities
stocking shelves at food pantry

Northern Wisconsin Food Pantry Meets Community’s Needs with the Help of USDA

 In the past 10 years, the Rhinelander area in Wisconsin has lost 1,200 high paying jobs. Thus leaving only minimum wage employment opportunities; creating a class of "working poor" and qualifying more than half the school students for free or reduced lunch. To assist the… [Read More]
Wisconsin
Community Facilities
Palisade Fire Station

Palisade Fire Barn Renovation

The preexisting fire barn in Palisade, Nebraska, was too small to accommodate the needs of its Rural Fire District. The fire ambulance, fire trucks, grass rigs, and other equipment were all parked inside a one-door building. There was barely enough room to walk between the… [Read More]
Nebraska
Community Facilities
[From left to right] Grottoes Volunteer Fire Department board members Jeff Morris, Captain CJ Chandler and Assistant Chief Chandler Hardy pictured in front of fire protection equipment purchased with the help of a $50,000 USDA Rural Development grant.

Pride in a department, pride in a community

Nostalgia filled the Grottoes Volunteer Fire Department (GVFD) training room recently as four lifetime members reminisced about how far the department has come in 94 years. The department’s history - stemming back to 1922 even before its incorporation in 1948 - shows that it’s… [Read More]
Virginia
Community FacilitiesRural Development
Primos Pasos First Steps

Primos Pasos First Steps

Primeros Pasos, Inc. was founded by a grass roots group of caring citizens who saw a need for a high-quality education and child learning center.  The group opened a center in 1997 in a rental property.  In 2007, Primeros Pasos purchased a parcel of land (on Savannah… [Read More]
Delaware, Maryland, and District of Columbia (DC)
Community Facilities
Picture of South Big Horn Hospital

Rural Hospital Modernizes with USDA Rural Development

35 miles may not seem like a long distance, but when a Wyoming blizzard is blowing and the road is a sheet of ice, the delay could mean the difference between life or death. South Big Horn County Hospital in Basin, Wyoming carries the designation of a critical access hospital,… [Read More]
Wyoming
Community Facilities
New Monitoring System

Saving Lives Through USDA Rural Development Funding

Day Kimball Healthcare, located in the second district of Connecticut in Middlesex county, was awarded a Community Facility Grant to purchase bedside physiologic monitoring equipment. USDA Rural Development provided $50,000 in grant funds for the project. The  hospital is… [Read More]
Connecticut
Community Facilities

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