Location and Context
The Appalachian Sustainable Development, Community Foundation of the New River Valley (ASD, CFNRV) collaborative spans more than 15 counties in far southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee. CFNRV and ASD seek to join forces to regenerate and expand the region's ecological, social and financial capital as a basis for healthy, sustainable communities. The barriers and obstacles people here face describe a web of issues underlying the struggles of countless communities throughout central Appalachia and much of rural America: A low value, extractive economy has degraded the environment, leaving once self-reliant people largely dependent upon outside resources. Coal veins are drying up, tobacco farmers are forced to look for other crops and forests are plucked daily to support demand for raw materials elsewhere. Jobs, too, are exported from this region. Longstanding divisions between people of race and class remain unsolved. People, natural resources, and money all flow out of the region, engendering high poverty, and unemployment rates 2-4 times the national average. In this environment, many communities have become fragmented, competing against one another for factories and for state and federal dollars.

While these problems remain severe, the partners seek to forge a collaborative that calls for a great diversity of people working cooperatively to improve their own livelihoods, and to rebuild the capital assets of this region. The two lead organizations arose six years ago out of diverse and non-traditional relationships of people - environmentalists and economic developers, low-income community leaders and university faculty, black and white, urban and rural folks.

Collaborative Structure and Strategy
The matrix (see below) depicts the conceptual framework that guides our proposed work - rebuilding ecological, social and financial capital. The information listed under each partner's name, denotes work that that organization already actively undertakes. The collaborative (the middle column) information offers a model for the exchange and value-added benefit each of the partner's service areas would reap should funding become available. The collaborative is currently active in its search for money to fund the model.

Grassroots Asset Formation (Capital Asset)	Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD)	ASD-CFNRV Collaborative Partnership	Community Foundation of the New River Valley (CFRNRV)
Community-Based Sustainable Development (Ecological)	Strengthen/expand sustainable agriculture, forestry, and community development capacity	Support startup of a sustainable community development efforts like ASD in NRV	CFNRV actions are to strengthen and sustain core capacities of Foundation
Capacity Building (Social)	Design, test, implement "work-based" capacity building program	Design, test, implement EAGLES program for ASD	EAGLES sustainable w/local trainers and financial resources
Philanthropic Resources Development (Financial)	Partner information and policy development for locally-based philanthropic institution (new CF)	Develop new philanthropic resources. Catalyze and harness local resources. Advance grassroots philanthropic model	Strengthen and expand grassroots philanthropy and capital asset formation.

ASD strengthens and expands sustainable agriculture, forestry, and community development work in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee, and would help catalyze comparable efforts in the New River Valley. CFNRV will strengthen and expand grassroots-based philanthropy in Virginia's New River Valley and help catalyze comparable efforts in far southwest Virginia.

Leverage and Impact
The Appalachian portions of Virginia and Tennessee have long been dependent upon outside private capital to stimulate economic development, and external grant funding to help meet the needs of those left out of economic growth. This dual dependency is addressed in the ASD-CFNRV collaborative: ASD's sustainable development approach helps build and diversify the economic base of families and communities, strengthening the viability of small businesses and farms. This will help build a self-generating source of private financial capital.

Overcoming the paucity of philanthropic resources in our region is also addressed by this leveraging strategy. While there are a few, small, family foundations in the region, their resources are limited in quantity and scope. In a recent study by the Southern Rural Development Initiative (SRDI), southwest Virginia ranked in the lowest percentiles of local foundation resources and levels of grant support received from national funders.

In order to stimulate the development of a philanthropic capacity in the region, we propose to utilize a portion of funds to begin grant making (re-granting) in far southwest Virginia (ASD's service area) and to expand and focus grant making in the New River Valley. This re-granting activity has two distinct purposes: to promote and gain support for both foundations; and, to encourage emerging sustainable development efforts in the ASD and CFNRV service areas.

Both ASD and the CFNRV have developed strategies of community-based development that are already serving as models in the field. ASD's work has been described in numerous publications, including two nationally distributed books (Rural Sustainable Development in America, 1997, and Ecological Learning in Everyday Life, 2001) and several journals, including In Business, Appalachia, and others. The CFNRV's groundbreaking approach, in which virtually all of its assets and operating support are being built locally, in a less than affluent region, has provoked interest and recognition. Most recently, the CFNRV was invited to be an inaugural member of the Aspen Institute Rural Philanthropy Initiative. The Southeastern Council of Foundations sponsored a regional meeting at which CFNRV presented its grassroots approach to building financial and social capital. The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation have provided key support in promoting the CFNRV's approach to development. The innovation which both CFNRV and ASD offer to this learning process is that of asset building from, literally, the ground up. In communities historically viewed as poor and deficient, the partners in this collaborative are helping to develop a broad, rich asset base that springs from community itself.

	Main Contact
	Andrew J. Morikawa Executive Director The Community Foundation of the New River Valley Phone: (540) 381-8999 cfnrv@cfnrv.org Anthony Flaccavento Phone: (276) 623-1121 asd@eva.org