On behalf of the Partners for Rural Transformation we write to urge you to support the Rural Partnership Program (RPP) as outlined in the American Jobs Plan that will provide vital, flexible financial resources and capacity building to ensure that small communities in rural America are able to invest in, develop, and sustain locally led community and economic development initiatives. Partners for Rural Transformation is a coalition of six Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) that serve three-quarters of the country’s persistent poverty counties, communities that are overwhelming rural and people of color. With headquarters in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, Native American communities, the Deep South, the Rio Grande Valley and regions in the Rural West, the Partners for Rural Transformation has a unique lens on the range of challenges these communities face, solutions to them, and deep connections with diverse local leaders who are dedicated to creating change. The recommendations included here are rooted in decades of experience, which includes deploying over $2 billion, reaching millions of people who reside in persistent poverty communities.
Members of the Partners for Rural Transformation are lenders and participants in numerous federal initiative such as, but not limited to those run by the Small Business Administration, U.S. Department of Treasury, Federal Housing Finance Administration, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, CDFI Fund, and U.S. Department of Agricultural, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In order to ensure that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is able to deploy RPP funds as quickly and as close to the ground as possible to assist persistently poor rural areas and small cities to recover from the impacts of COVID-19, to see the program design suggestions we offer click here: