In the hopes of providing better service to communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, the Association of Village Council Presidents has formed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s branch of Rural Development.
The hope is to complement the strengths each organization can provide—with the ultimate goal of improving living conditions in rural Alaska. The Association of Village Council Presidents, or AVCP, is a tribally based nonprofit that serves Y-K Delta communities. According to Jim Nordlund, USDA Rural Development’s Alaska state director, AVCP can provide assets that USDA is lacking.
“Rural Development—while we have a lot of funding available to all parts of rural Alaska—we just don’t have the staff to adequately deliver those programs,” said Nordlund.
Nordlund says AVCP will assist with marketing and outreach for Rural Development programs—essentially operating as an extension of the agency in the Y-K region. Rural Development can’t have staff everywhere in rural Alaska, so they’re hoping partnering with regional nonprofits will give them that on-the-ground perspective.
Nordlund says the biggest thing AVCP and other nonprofits can do is get the word out about programs that Rural Development can assist with.
“These projects take a long time to actually develop…to get the applications in, to get the engineering done, to find the funding,” said Nordlund. “And it takes a while for the project to get to the point of breaking ground. But that process can’t even start if you haven’t done the outreach so people know that these funding avenues are available.”
The main Rural Development projects in the Y-K and Bering Strait regions are housing and community facilities, but they also work on utilities and business development programs. Five communities recently received USDA grants for water and waste management programs. And in the Bering Strait region, over $36 million in funding has gone toward projects including water and wastewater lines in Nome and a bulk fuel facility in Stebbins.
Nordlund says Rural Development has not discussed a cooperative agreement partnership with Kawerak yet, but will consider it after seeing how the arrangement plays out with AVCP.
