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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: 888 Stories
Hope Comes with USDA Financing

Hope Comes with USDA Financing

Ron Patton of Holladay, Tennessee has seen more than his share of hard times.  A series of accidents and poor health has left him disabled since 2005.  Since purchasing his home and land in rural Benton County in 2000, it has become more and more difficult for him to… [Read More]
Tennessee
Home Repair
Horse Sense Provides Much Needed Therapy

Horse Sense Provides Much Needed Therapy

For Pat Moran, one of the co-founders of Seaview Equine Learning Facility (SELF), helping individuals with many special challenges through equine-assisted therapy only makes sense.  It is also her lifetime passion.  The facility provides unmounted and mounted learning… [Read More]
New Jersey
Community Facilities
Home at Last

I Take Great Pride in Owning a Home

Kaitlyn Gehle and her son Jaxon had been living in a rental home for a year.  Kaitlyn dreamed of owning a home of her own and began working with a local realtor to find a house that she could afford and that Jaxon and she could turn into a home.  USDA Rural Development… [Read More]
Nebraska
Homeownership
Innovative Education at Pennsylvania Charter School

Innovative Education at Pennsylvania Charter School

Bear Creek Community Charter School at Ten Mile Run in Bear Creek Township, Luzerne County, has such an amazing curriculum that it’s attracting students at an astonishing rate. The school is at full capacity and renovation to the old building is not feasible. The current… [Read More]
Pennsylvania
Community Facilities
woman standing beside new shower in bathroom

Investing in Safe, Affordable Housing on a South Dakota Reservation

Biological needs – sleep, food, water, air, shelter - form the base as they are of the greatest importance in maintaining life. Once a person has met the biological needs, the next concern is safety. In one of the poorest counties in the nation, Buffalo County, USDA Rural… [Read More]
South Dakota
GrantsHomeownershipTribal
Red Shirt Table Overlook

Investing in the Basics of High Quality Education

As Acting State Director of USDA Rural Development in South Dakota, I want to ensure small South Dakotan communities have just as much opportunity to have successful business ventures, to build their community infrastructure, and to improve the quality of life in their hometowns… [Read More]
South Dakota
Economic DevelopmentGrants
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation sign

It's All About the Connections

In rural South Dakota, tribal members often lack access to higher education courses and facilities.  Students living on the 1,900-square-mile Rosebud Indian Reservation and the 11,000-square-mile Oglala Lakota Sioux Indian Reservation, for instance, struggle to travel long… [Read More]
South Dakota
EducationTribal
Electric Transmission Line

Largest Transmission Line in North Dakota Serves 125,000 Consumers

Electricity provides us with many conveniences: flip a switch and the dark is light, hit a button and our television turns on, heat your home in the winter and cool it in the summer, cook your food on the stove or store it in the refrigerator. Electricity is needed to run heavy… [Read More]
North Dakota
Electric
Lifetime Renter Achieves Homeownership

Lifetime Renter Achieves Homeownership

Rural Development has a multitude of programs that help communities expand upon their existing assets and assist in creating an infrastructure to help improve the lives of rural residents. For Linda Pickett, the opportunity to own a home has long seemed to be a distant reality.… [Read More]
Tennessee
HomeownershipHousing
USDA funds for green house lighting

Local Employer Receives Funds to Save on Energy Costs

 Ace Begonias, Inc. located in Woodbridge, CT., was founded in 1976 using a rented 3000 sq. ft. antique facility. In 1980, with assistance from USDA’s Farmer's Home Administration, they purchased nearly two dozen acres in Bethany and Woodbridge and added a 17,000 sq. ft.… [Read More]
Connecticut
Energy

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