West Virginia Community Development Hub, Inc.

Communities participating in the DARRE program use time-tested methods to build up their Main Streets and downtown neighborhoods with the ultimate goal of increasing tourism and growing local economies.
Community teams work with a network of service providers led by our team at The Hub to integrate strategies like developing downtown buildings; engaging and supporting local entrepreneurs; and creating long-term plans for revitalization. The newly integrated strategies become a model for each community to bring new energy to their downtowns and grow their local economies. The model created is unique to each community and can create success, even in hard-to-access, rural, and economically depressed areas.
The central partners leading the program, the WV Community Development Hub, Partner Community Capital, Woodlands Development Group, and the Northern WV Brownfields Assistance Center at WVU, are collaborating to bring high-impact services to each community. Eight communities are served

AmeriCorps VISTA is a federal program that brings capacity building resources across the country in the form of dedicated individuals who choose to serve their community for one year, with the goal of ending generational poverty. We are an intermediary AmeriCorps VISTA sponsor, placing members in communities across the state.

As an intermediary host, we work with communities participating in our programs as well as other groups across the state to help grow capacity and create vibrant, prosperous communities.

The Cultivate WV program supports community capacity building through leadership
development, team development, and small-scale community projects. Our goal is to help your community create long-term engagement from residents and new opportunities for community
leadership, all while building positive momentum for your area. We offer community coaching;
workshops; funding for community projects; and leadership development opportunities.

Cultivate communities commit to a year-long entry-level community engagement process
where they participate in monthly workshops focused on different subjects such as community
engagement, team building and dynamics, project identification, prioritization and planning,
grant writing, leadership development and communications.

This program will serve 2 communities in 2023, to be announced.

Building more intentional, strategic opportunities for networking will collectively advance the work of all people focusing on community and economic growth in West Virginia. Through the Community Collaborative Network, new partnerships are explored, individual initiatives form into system-wide efforts, and collective goals are paired with creative solutions to advance work together.

We serve as the backbone support for the Community Collaborative Network. We help with management of the network, including offering staff support so that a set of core functions that ensure the operations and movement of the network happen regularly. We also participate in the network as a representative community development entity.

Using guidance from the network, the 15-member leading Steering Committee sets the goals, vision, and priorities and generally advances that work happening through the Community Collaborative Network.