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Success Stories
BROADBAND
LOAN PROGRAM
Nex-Tech
November 4, 2004
Amount of 2 Loans: $6,574,000
Nex-Tech of Lenora, Kansas
through a USDA Rural Development Broadband Loan has
brought broadband, video and voice services in towns
with poor or non-existent data services. This project
has connected 2,251 voice lines, 1,855 video subscribers,
768 high-speed data as well as improving service to
528 dial-up subscribers. More importantly, high speed
data connections have helped in the creation of new
businesses while a bundled package of services means
the technology is affordable to customers. The short
and long term economic benefits as a result of Nex-Tech's
installation of fiber optics to business locations
have been numerous and obvious to community leaders
and residents.
An example of this economic
growth is the construction of a new ethanol plant
in Phillipsburg. The $54 million dollar ethanol plant
employs 34 people and depends on Nex-Tech for its
broadband service which is an integral part of their
business. There has been a slight increase in school
enrollment across the three school districts in the
county as well. The population is also estimated to
be increasing, with new home construction on the rise
and available rental properties being very hard to
come by. Nex-Tech understood community development
and had a long-term vision for communities in Kansas;
this has been a successful combination for rural America.
More Broadband Success
Stories
COMMUNITY
CONNECT GRANT PROGRAM
Barking Wind Corporation
Wapanucka, Oklahoma, is a
small rural town of only 445 residents. The town does
not have its own post office, library, hospital, or
police department, and its primary general store burned
down about five years ago. Though once a thriving
railroad town with a population of 2,500, steady decline
has brought about the depopulation and unemployment
synonymous with rural America. Wapanuckans realized
that they needed to combat this destructive cycle
to keep Wapanucka on the map, and eagerly applied
for a USDA Community Connect Broadband Grant. The
Barking Wind Corporation was awarded $379,000 in 2004,
and shortly thereafter the construction of a community
center was complete. The community center is available
to all ages, from students to senior citizens, and
all users are offered instruction on using the computers
and the internet. In fact, students from Murray State
College serve as interns, paid by Barking Wind Corp.,
who help users at the center. These interns teach
the entire community to use the center to do all sorts
of things such as researching for homework, sending
emails to relatives who are overseas in the military,
and applying for jobs. Individual citizens have clearly
taken advantage of the many economic opportunities
afforded by the center. Examples of these individuals
include a woman who studies curriculum and takes nursing
courses online; a trucker who now receives haul-jobs
online, whose demand has greatly increased; and a
poet who composes on the computers and submits her
poems to literary magazines over the net. On a more
general scale, sixty buildings and residences have
Broadband service, allowing the town services to function
much more efficiently, thus attracting more potential
residents, and also allowing a number of in-home small
business entrepreneurs to increase their customer
base, thus increasing profitability. Jay la Moure,
president of Barking Wind Corp., expressed how much
Broadband brings to the community, noting that the
citizens have "enthusiastically embraced"
the service. He added that, in his opinion, Wapanucka
is "a model town for the RUS grant program."
Thanks to the combination of the RUS grant and the
ambition of Wapanuckans themselves, la Moure is clearly
right.
More
Community Connect Stories
DISTANCE
AND LEARNING TELEMEDICINE SUCCESS STORIES
Berrien Springs
Berrien Springs, Michigan,
is a rural area with a large number of schools. When
the community realized that its schools were lacking
the educational opportunities that schools in other
areas were afforded, they actively sought out a solution.
The solution was a USDA RUS Distance Learning and
Telemedicine Grant. The grant application was submitted,
approved, and a grant of $350,000 was awarded for
the project. Shortly after, thirty five elementary
and middle schools received Polycom videoconferencing
units, monitors and cards. BCISD provided extensive
training and professional development to all schools
in the project, and the students, and professors,
clearly benefited immediately from the many new educational
opportunities. Recently, many students expressed how
much they have enjoyed their interactive videoconferencing
programs and that they look forward to many more.
At Mars Elementary School in Berrien Springs, for
example, first-grade students all sent thank you letters
saying how many interesting things they had learned
about penguins through a videoconference with the
St. Louis Zoo. In another example, at McKinley Elementary,
in Dowagiac, second-graders learned about a blizzard
in New York as well as bumblebee, fruit, and Vampire
bats. Also at this school, third-grade students clearly
had an amazing time playing science jeopardy; posing
questions to the author of a book that they had read
(Hard Times Jar); and last but certainly not least,
talking about their home state with students in England,
who read original poems to their Michigan peers. With
35 schools served, the extremely diverse list of educational
benefits and opportunities goes on, showing just how
powerful a DLT Grant can be.
Gundersen Clinic, Ltd
Gundersen
Clinic, Ltd. operates several rural medical clinic
sites within its 19-county, tri-state service area.
Several of these sites provide radiology imaging services
and many already have digital radiography services
(x-rays on computers). However, four sites in their
regional health system remained unconnected to their
digital radiography environment. The equipment requested
through a Rural Development Distance Learning and
Telemedicine Grant allows the radiographic images
to be viewed and interpreted by radiologists at the
hub site in La Crosse, WI. Gundersen Clinic, Ltd.
now transmits 40,000 radiography images from regional
health systems per year as a result of integrating
all their digital radiography equipment.
WEATHER
RADIO TRANSMITTER GRANT PROGRAM
Commonwealth
of Virginia, Department of Emergency Management Receives
$59,900 USDA Weather Radio Transmitter Grant
On February 20, 2008, U.S.
Rep. Thelma Drake, and Ellen Davis, USDA RD Virginia
State Director, presented a $59,900 Weather Radio
Transmitter Grant award to the Commonwealth of Virginia,
Department of Emergency Management, for its Accomack
County, Virginia site. The event took place at the
Town Hall in Onancock, VA. The grant funds will be
used for the purchase and installation of a 1000-watt
dual transmitter and antenna. The transmitter will
provide NOAA Weather Radio all Hazards Broadcast to
Accomack County, towns and locations along Route 13,
and the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
In the picture from left to
right are: Jason Loftus, Public Safety Director-Accomack
County, Ellen Davis, State Director USDA Rural Development-Virginia,
Bill Sammler, Warning Coordination Meteorologist-NOAA,
Congresswoman Thelma Drake-2nd District of Virginia
and Michael Cline, State Coordinator for Virginia
Dept. of Emergency Management.
TRADITIONALTELEPHONE
INFRASTRUCTURE LOAN PROGRAM
Heurfano, New Mexico
Need:
Huerfano, New Mexico, , a very small town of only
379 residents, is located in the northeast of the
Navajo Nation reservation. The reservation consists
of 27,000 square miles of beautiful yet harsh land.
According to a 1990 census of the entire Nation, the
average per capita income on the reservation was $4106;
58% of its residents lived below the poverty line;
36 % of adults older than 25 had less than a ninth
grade education; a third of all houses had no bedrooms,
52% had incomplete plumbing, and 54% were wood-heated
only; and finally 77.5 % of homes had no telephone
service.
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