Hertford-Bertie Counties Champion Community

Lead Entity: Bertie-Hertford Counties Champion Community

Demographics:
 

State: North Carolina

                                                                    Bertie                                      Hertford

County Census Tracts:                               9602 ,9603                             9501, 9502, 9504      

Community Population:                             19,773                                    22,601
Poverty Rate:                                              23.5%                                    18.3%      

Child Poverty:                                             30.7%                                     21.3%   

Elderly Poverty:                                          28.3%                                     21.0%
Net land Area (square miles):                     699                                         353   

Background: 

• Unemployment Rate:                            8.6%                                        7.0%

• Median Household Income:                  $25,177                                   $26,422

• Per Capital Income:                              $14,096                                   $15,641

Strategic Plan Highlights:

With the implementation of its strategic plan, the Bertie-Hertford Counties Champion Community seeks to achieve a balance in economic and community development. The community plans to:

• Develop the appropriate interface and transfer of technology from colleges and universities for the benefit of residents of the targeted census tracts;

• Assist in stimulating the expansion and diversification of rural economic development in targeted Bertie and Hertford Counties Champion Community census tracts;

• Provide the milieu for minority participation in the economic development strategy as a partner for economic growth and empowerment in targeted census tracts.  Assist in creating and retaining jobs;

• Conduct feasibility analyses, and provide recommendations, for appropriate land use and retaining opportunities in the development of the Bertie and Hertford Counties Champion Community targeted areas;

• Preparation of an overall economic development/empowerment strategy for the development of the Bertie and Hertford Counties targeted areas;

• Identification of relevant business persons with the capability to assist in the facilitation of the project(s); 

• Identification of adjacent and periphery properties affected or impacted by the short and long term projections outlined for the development of the Champion Community targeted areas;

• Design of appropriate information for dissemination and guidance to interested partners, state and federal organizations, and businesses;

• Identification of immediate sources of financing through recommendations concerning the proposal submission process, etc;

• Provide technical assistance and guidance to principals and interested partners during the exercise of this scope of work;

• Develop, and conduct analysis of, the financial support base for marketing housing consistent with the feasibility recommendations of the Bertie-Hertford Counties Champion Community strategic plan;

• Assess the overall demand for housing by categories, i.e. price, size, location and purchasing ability of potential buyers;

• Generation of alternative intervention strategies to address obvious problems relating to the infrastructure.

Partnerships include:

• Roanoke Chowan Partners for Progress  (Consortium of organizations from Hertford, Bertie, Gates and Northampton Counties);

• Community Residents;

• Local Governments;

• Businesses;

• Nonprofits; and,

• CDC’s.

Leveraging:

Benefits for securing resources include funding sources from foundations such as: Z. Smith Reynolds, Duke Endowment, Rural Internet Access Authority, Roanoke Economic Development Inc.  Grants are also being sought from federal, state, local and corporate foundations and agencies.

Community Involvement:

Efforts to keep the communities involved and participating in the implementation process include:

• Learning to use their own initiative to secure resources from many sources (federal, state, local, corporate, foundations, etc.) to implement the strategic plan;

• Using citizen participation on the board and in program administration to improve, through experience, the communities’ abilities to manage their programs and monitor the programs of their subgrantees;

• To develop within communities, an alliance of community leaders that will obtain the capacity to plan, organize, manage, and implement their strategic plan to generate sustainable community and economic revitalization.

• Focusing on the interrelationships between community needs and a variety of connected programs rather than on narrow single-purpose programs; i.e., business development, job training, public education, housing, transportation, day care, shopping center, roads, water and sewer, etc.  Through this process, local leadership skills are developed and the community’s capacity to help itself is increased.  This is empowerment! 

• Regional partnerships that bring representatives from several communities to discuss issues and work collectively to identify opportunities and strategies to resolve challenges that face the region as a whole;

• Educational initiatives that provide job training for family wage jobs, computer skills training, and youth development initiatives to prepare young people for the working world;

• Enabling all segments of society to have a voice when it comes to mapping out a path for community empowerment and providing mechanisms for those who previously fell outside of the system, to become involved and play apart in securing a better future for them and their families;

• Through information sharing communities are beginning to learn the best practices for instituting economic and community development programs and projects.

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