Projects

VT Community Leadership Training Program

Developing Context-Sensitive Highway Design

Building Water and Wastewater Collaborative Funding

VT Community Leadership Training Program

VCRD is supporting the Vermont Community Leadership Training Program as it provides leadership education and practical experience to help Vermonters improve their lives and better their communities. The VCLPT builds the skills, knowledge and confidence that citizens need to be active and effective participants in their communities.  VCRD is facilitating the partnership to find funding and support the expansion of this project.  The collaborative team behind this project consists of the Vermont Children's Forum, VT Office of Economic Opportunity, Central Vermont Community Action Council, and the Vermont Council on Rural Development.

Developing Context- Sensitive Highway Design

Working closely with the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Agency of Transportation, VCRD is participating in a program to bring context-sensitive highway design to the residents of rural Vermont.  Beginning with an artist-led visioning of the history and future of Danville and its central green, project collaborators are designing a highway with artistic enhancements that fit the human contest, landscape, economic development needs, and the historical values of the community.  VCRD is documenting this activity as a model for replication throughout Vermont and nationally.

Building Water and Wastewater Funding Collaboration

To address water and wastewater project funding issues in rural Vermont, VCRD partnered in 2000 with USDA-Rural development, the Vermont agency of Natural Resources, the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, and Gilman Housing Trust.  This partnership responded to findings from the VCRD-sponsored study.  Funding Water Projects in Vermont, which was conducted through the Maxwell School; at Syracuse University.  Noting the return of over $1.3 million in unspent USDA funds to the federal government in 1999, the study recommended that agencies collaborate to maximize the use of their resources.  VCRD facilitated interagency meetings where participants agreed to cooperative strategies to ensure useful expenditure of all federal funds in Vermont, which will save resources annually and allow Vermont to compete for additional funds nationally.