More info on RUFES

An Action-Learning Institute for Washington Horizons Communities

November 2-4, 2009

The Opportunity: An Action-Learning Exchange to Advance Rural Family Economic Success

Working together, the Washington Horizons Program, the Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) are offering Washington’s Horizons 1 & 11 communities the opportunity to strengthen your Horizons action by advancing local efforts to improve the economic success of low-income families in your communities. The opportunity is to participate in a Rural Family Economic Success Action-Learning Institute that will bring you ideas that work to help low-income rural families get ahead – from your peer communities in Washington and others across the country.

This Rural Family Economic Success (RUFES) Action Learning Institute, being held November 2-4, 2009, will be tailored to the needs and opportunities of the local, action-ready Horizons leadership teams that commit to participate. This is not a typical “conference” – rather, it is a structured working session in which your team will both learn about key RuFES strategies and policies and develop an action plan to take back home. The Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group (CSG) will work with your team and the sponsoring partners to design and facilitate the Institute.

Horizons, NWAF and AECF are partnering to sponsor this Institute because they share both passion and goals to help reduce family poverty and to help rural communities thrive. Horizons, with the support of NWAF and the assistance of Washington State University Extension, has engaged and organized hundreds of people in Washington’s rural communities in building their capacity to examine issues, lead, work together and pursue a new vision for their communities – always toward the end of reducing poverty. AECF’s RuFES Institutes engage action-oriented community-based teams – like Horizons teams – in learning about and adapting the best available strategies to help low-income working families in their communities do better – today and into the next generation.

The Content: Strengthening Rural Families

The Institute will engage each team in understanding AECF’s Rural Family Economic Success framework in depth, and in using it to make more – and more strategic – progress in improving outcomes for rural children and families back home. Specifically, the framework will address how communities can help low-income and low-wealth rural families get ahead by pursuing three outcomes:

§ Earn It: Working families earn a living that allows them to survive, thrive and raise their children in their community. This means that a family’s working members can qualify for a job in the region, they can find and land that job, they can keep it, they can create their own businesses locally, their jobs produce enough income to meet at least a basic family budget, and they advance in careers and income over time.

§ Keep It: Working families have access to and make good choices that safeguard their family income and lower their cost of living, forging stable and predictable financial lives. This means that a family sets financial goals, builds a mainstream banking relationship, improves its credit record, obtains affordable financial services, accesses available tax benefits and public and private support to close the gap between income and expenses, and obtains their family’s essential goods and services at reasonable prices.

§ Grow It: Working families accumulate and maintain assets that gain value and advance family and community prosperity over time. This means that family members are saving, advancing their education, buying homes and acquiring other assets that improve their financial prospects over generations; they are caring for and maintaining those assets; and that civic engagement and local investment increases the value of family and community assets over time.


Adapting to the starting point of the participants, this two and one-half day Institute will include a mix of sessions that build on each other, from a RuFES overview, to program and tactical approaches that work to make progress on specific RuFES goals, case stories and tools that help you move policy, service delivery, and standard business practice to create better Earn It, Keep It and Grow It outcomes for your families. The Institute also will also feature small group and peer advice exercises that help participants develop a specific, trackable, What Will We Do? RUFES agenda and Next Steps workplan.

Who may participate?

The RUFES Institute will be open to up to seven action teams of five to six members each from Horizons II communities in Washington. The ideal team will include key doers, thinkers, opinion leaders, and decisionmakers who can – and will – make the difference in moving a RUFES agenda back home. It can draw key members from your Horizons steering committee, include your Horizons coach, and be rounded out with a selection that makes sense in your community.

For example, one team might include an educator, a workforce development specialist, a community action agency director, a banking or credit union director, a low-income family advocate, an active youth leader, and a chamber of commerce representative. A different team might bring along an economic development director, a community foundation staffer or board member, an influential local business owner, an elected official, a spiritual leader, and a health care administrator. The exact mix for your community depends on who makes decisions, has energy, exerts influence and/or really must be at the table to make a local action plan succeed and stick. You know who they are!

The Washington Horizons and Aspen CSG staff will work with each team to ensure the selection of a balanced and action-oriented team that will work well with others – and themselves! Other Institute participants will include a Resource Team, selected both to offer specific Earn It, Keep It and Grow It expertise and experience, and to assist individual teams in their RUFES analysis and action planning.

What is expected of participants?

Participating teams are expected to:

§ Select/work with a team leader. The Team Leader (or co-leaders) will be your communication point person before and after the Institute, will ensure that the team prepares for the Institute, and will help convene you to keep your RUFES action plan on track.
§ Prepare in advance. CSG will conduct a two-three hour interview of your team a few months prior to the Institute. A few weeks before the Institute, each team will receive an assignment to prepare in advance that will help them come to the Institute informed and focused on their RUFES challenges and opportunities. Aspen CSG designs this assignment as structured questions for you to answer and present to your peer teams, and to take only a few hours.
§ Attend the entire Institute. Dropping in and out will detract from the flow of the event and the quality of the outcomes for everyone participating. Because the Institute is designed to take teams through a process that builds from session to session, all team members are expected to attend the Institute from start to finish.
§ Develop a RUFES Action Plan. The Institute prepares you to take action back home on at least two RuFES Action Ideas. The agenda includes time for your team to devise a three-month RUFES Action Plan and accompanying steps.
§ Advise and inform your peer teams. In some cases, you may be asked to give teams from the other participating locations frank and caring critique and advice about their RUFES challenges and plans – or to present a story about a particular successful approach being used in your community.
§ Advance and report on your Action Plan. Teams are expected to carry out their action plans back home, and to share details of their RUFES progress with AECF, NWAF, CSG and the Horizons staff as part of the Institute follow-up.

Timing, Location and Support

The Institute will begin at 10 a.m. on Monday, November 2, 2009 and wrap up at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4, 2009. The Institute will be held at the Cedarbrook Convention site near the SeaTac airport..

The partnership will cover the costs of travel, lodging (single rooms!) and meals for teams participating in the Institute.

If you want to participate or have more questions …
Please contact your community coach or
Doreen Hauser-Lindstrom
WA Horizons Project Director
509.358.7686 (office)
509.435.3381 (cell)
Doreen@wsu.edu