An Introduction to the Rural Northwest Team
The overarching goal of the Center’s Rural Northwest Team is to help build the field of community organizing in rural areas. As a well-defined team, the Rural Northwest Team is relatively new; however, since the Center’s inception, many individuals at CCC have worked with rural, community-based groups.
Since its formation as a formal “team” in 2003, the Rural Northwest Team has focused its initial efforts on providing technical assistance to community-based organizations in the Great Plains states of South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska, as well as in Iowa. Center staff have strong personal roots in this region, as well as long-standing relationships nurtured in part through technical assistance provided in the past to grassroots groups there.
The Dakotas and Nebraska were chosen because they have a very limited nonprofit infrastructure; and, because they have a large Native American population – a constituency with which the Center has unique ties. (See CCC’s Native American Project page.)
Iowa, on the other hand, has a more established base of community organizations. The Rural Northwest Team’s task there is to strengthen organizations that are already in place, and help build cooperative, cross-organizational relationships.
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