Innovators in Rural Community Economic Development
Yellow Wood was invited by NCRC to participate in a panel on Innovative Strategies to Support Rural Communities to showcase WealthWorks. I represented Yellow Wood and set the stage for fellow panelist and WealthWorks practitioner Justin Maxson, by providing an overview of the forms of wealth and the concept of a WealthWorks value chain. My presentation is available at http://www.ncrc.org/conference/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Shanna-Ratner.pdf.
Justin provided an insider’s view of Wealth Works on the ground in the energy sector. Justin explained that, while his organization, MACED is a development finance institution, now, as a result of their work in building a WealthWorks value chain, they have also had to become energy experts. They began with a pilot involving 4 rural electric cooperatives and about 150 residential energy retrofits per year and have scaled up within four years to working with 16 rural electric cooperatives committed to 1,000 retrofits per year. Carla Dickstein from CEI rounded out the panel by sharing examples of CEI’s sector-based lending in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, and policy engagement.
