Per our mission, the Appalachian Forest Resource Center is seeking communities that want to take hold of their fate and develop positive projects that create economic opportunity for the region's residents, while at the same time support healthy forest ecosystems. We are inviting communities and community groups to apply to carry out participatory research that helps lead to positive options for their community.

We are looking for projects that:

• Have active involvement of a community group
• Can be successfully carried out by that group
• Advance the work that community group is doing
• Answer a question that is important to the community
• Help build healthy communities
• Help lead to healthy forests
• May be of help to other communities in the region
• Are run by communities willing to share their learning

Ideally projects will:

• Help a new group build their capacity to carry out bigger projects in the future
• Involve a number of people
• Benefit a number of people
• Benefit a number of acres of forest
• Create options that help the local economy and forests
• Have support beyond just the people directly involved
• Build community
• Engage communities that rely on forests for their livelihoods
• Open up doors for the participating community groups

If you, or community groups that you know, are interested in participating, please read the following links and/or pass them along. We appreciate your support in assisting rural communities engage in helping themselves to make a brighter future! If you have any questions about participatory research please contact Rachel Orwan at rachel@ruralaction.org

Thank you,
Colin Donohue, AFRC Principal Investigator and
Rachel Orwan, AFRC Research Coordinator

Select one of the following links for more information