For the past three decades, the Vermont Council on Rural Development has aimed to help rural towns identify concerns — like not having enough childcare centers, for instance — and help communities figure out how to address them.
The nonprofit does that by helping communities marshal resources to fund those projects with help from federal, state, local, nonprofit and private partners.
Beginning Sept. 3, the council will have a new executive director at its helm.
Denise Smith joined Mary Williams Engisch in the studio to talk about her new role. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Williams Engisch: VCRD prides itself on centering community wants and needs when developing projects and solutions. Why is that mindset and framework important? Why approach projects this way?
Denise Smith: The short answer, I guess I'll give it, is that communities, inherently, are the best problem solvers of their own problems, and the best solution-oriented folks. I think a lot about, if projects or ideas aren't harnessed from a community or developed by that community, it's a lot harder to sell them. It's a lot harder to get the community, or even anybody, to wrap around the idea, if it wasn't generated from them. I inherently believe that communities have the wisdom. I think VCRD has been this organization, that's been around for three decades, that has really worked at harnessing that wisdom and harnessing the collective power of community in a way that I've never seen another organization be able to do.
Mary Williams Engisch: What are some challenges that rural Vermont is facing that you're hoping to tackle during your tenure?
Denise Smith: I want to answer that kind of two ways, because I guess I'm coming at this work right now from a pretty public health centered viewpoint from the work that I've been doing in Franklin County over the last decade, almost. I've been very focused on access to health care, transportation issues that communities are facing, substance use disorder is another really big one. That's to say, that's that public health lens. And I think there's intersection between that and economic development.
If we don't have a healthy population, and a population that feels like they can thrive because they're in survival mode, there is no getting to those other aspects of economic and sustainable development, or even, creative economy things that we want to focus on in Vermont. Because we're struggling, innately, with just being able to get to the doctor's office, or buy groceries. And so, I think that's it.
I think the other thing that's very top of mind for everybody right now is the incredible disasters that have been happening. You know, I remember when Irene hit Waterbury — my best friend lives on Randall Street — and that was like the 100-year flood. They decided to stay and then two years in a row, they've been hit again. I think when we think about rural Vermont, and just even the nature of Vermont and how it was developed, what are some things that we can do to build sustainable landscapes? The Vermont Council on Rural Development has been intimately involved in the Working Lands Enterprise and initiatives. And so how are we thinking about how we use our land differently, so that we can work better — and not harder — on mitigating some of the intensity of the weather patterns that are hitting us right now.
Mary Williams Engisch: Big picture — how do community members themselves benefit from a culture of open discussion about how Vermont communities evolve?
Denise Smith: I think it's an essential part of humanity, right? It's an essential part of being a human, and our need to be in relationship with each other. Because it's really when you're in relationship with other people with different perspective is when those sparks happen and when that creation happens. The other thing that I would say, is our resources are so scarce and limited, and even more so after the pandemic. We have to work together, right? The problems are complex. The systems that we've created are complex, and dismantling them is challenging and difficult. And thinking about them in a different way, and we can't do it alone because the challenges are so big. Not one organization that might work on one piece of it can do it alone.
Mary Williams Engisch: Last question: What will your first few priorities be?
Denise Smith: I think there's new leadership, I'm new. So, really kind of understanding what the organization is doing, what the priorities are, so helping to kind of frame what we're looking at and where we want to continue to work.
We've launched the Village Trust program, which is a really exciting initiative. That's a partnership between Vermont Community Foundation, us and Preservation Trust of Vermont. It's working with really small communities of 2,500. There's just like, some really exciting work that's happening at VCRD right now, in partnership with many other organizations. And so, I think just really getting my hands around the great work that we're doing, and then also like, thinking about, what are the next steps, and what are the strategies that we want to employ?
And we've also taken on this role of developing the change makers. We have a Leadership Network series. It's an online platform, Zoom. Anybody can attend it, but if you identify yourself as a community leader, you can come and join. And so part of it is like, is training those community leaders in what you need to learn about to make change in your community.
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