2023: A Year in Review for ReImagine Appalachia

This year, we hosted our annual Strategy Summit and added two more summits on topics we want to focus on upcoming years as federal climate funding comes into our region: Community Benefits and Redeveloping Shuttered Coal Plants. We also assisted with the Black Appalachian Coalition’s Strategy Summit and Policy Summit as well.

We hosted 32 events (in-person and virtual) this year consisting of 2 climate conversations events, 2 Instagram Live interviews, 2 from our Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative series, 3 from our Faith-in-Action series, 3 from our Make It in Appalachia series, 4 communication workshops, 5 events on the Farm Bill, and more!

We held over 21 coalition update meetings which take place every other Tuesday at noon EST! This is a space where we provide the latest on what’s happening with ReImagine Appalachia’s various campaigns, listen to a presentation of a guest speaker, and hear from updates from our partners. We had over 20 guest speakers and over 500 registrants sign up to participate. Register for these updates for 2024 here!

We were invited to present our various campaigns or overall coalition work at various conferences and events all over the country- including Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Michigan, and virtually! We almost always say yes to being a presenter–reach out to include us at your event for 2024!

We attended and participated in various events our partners have hosted in the region: ranging from tabling festivals and events, conferences, webinars, summits, and more! Want to invite us to your future event? Reach out to our Director of Outreach, Molly Updegrove at [email protected]

This year, we launched reports about job creation through green locomotive manufacturing, electrifying public transportation and school buses, how a federal subsidized job program and a portion of hiring on federally subsidized climate infrastructure projects could target discouraged workers and be designed to break down their barriers to employment, and the potential to create high-paying union careers for people of all by linking new opportunities on federally funded climate and infrastructure projects to paid on-the-job training opportunities via unionized apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.

In order to advocate for a strong Farm Bill that works for Appalachia, we made the toolkit, “Bringing the Farm Bill to Your Farmers Market.“ This toolkit is a step-by-step guide filled with everything from locating your nearest market to cooperating with market management and keystone vendors in the design of a fun, informative event that suits your community, all the way to contacting your members of Congress and local media. Since Congress failed to negotiate a new bill by the deadline and instead extended the current package for one more year, pushing negotiations for the new bill forward into 2024, this toolkit will also be handy in the upcoming year.

From informing local, regional, and national media about our report releases, to commenting on what is happening in Washington DC and how it affects Appalachians regarding the debt ceiling and appropriations to celebrating successes such as the launch of the American Climate Corps, we continue to foster relationships with reporters and find our way into national conversations about climate infrastructure projects.

Although less media hits than the previous years, we were still able to get a sizeable amount of media hits to continue the conversation around the federal climate infrastructure package. We received national media coverage in Truthout, Grist, Yale Climate Connections, and In These Times, as well as key local media hits from local NPR stations 90.5 WESA and 91.7 WVXU.

We’ve really upped our blog game this year, using this media form as a way to highlight important cultural events, exciting grant opportunities, summarizing newly launched reports, and debriefing legislative policies. We are always looking for guest blog submissions- please reach out to Annie Regan at [email protected] if you’re interested in contributing!

We sent out a lot of emails this year to keep y’all in the loop with our latest events, reports, blogs, and legislative updates! Thank you for subscribing and staying plugged into our work. ReImagine Appalachia has over 3,350 subscribers and we hope to grow this list to get the word out about our federal climate infrastructure work.

With all of these federal infrastructure dollars coming into the region, it can get a little overwhelming to keep up with the opportunities! That’s why we created these listservs that you can opt into to stay in the loop!

We were so honored to be able to sponsor two community events that we hold close to our hearts! First is the 2023 Mountain Grrl Experience that took place in Pikeville, Kentucky, celebrating women empowerment, with musicians, entrepreneurs, creators, and more using the time to network and share their work with others. The second is the Appalachian Queer Film Festival in Huntington, West Virginia, celebrating and amplifying LGBTQIA+ voices in the region.

The ReImagine Your Community Visioning Session Project is an initiative that brings together community leaders from across the region for a series of collaborative monthly meetings with the collective goal of implementing the toolkit in their own communities. The project will support participants to create a bottom-up, collective visioning process for a sustainable, equitable economy in each of the community leader’s communities, neighborhoods, or regions.