Your Rural Service Area

In this section, you will gain knowledge and skills for getting to know your rural service area. These include using existing online data, learning about how people are already connecting, scanning the community for existing resources and networks, and strategies for joining these existing groups. It concludes with a brief discussion of some of common barriers to rural outreach and networking and tips for on how to overcome them.

Know Before You Go

Before you head out to meet folks in your rural service area, you can use existing data to better understand who lives and works there. Here are some simple tools to use to gain an understanding of the demographics and disability in your rural service areas.

Activity: Using the Disability Counts Website

  1. Click this link http://rtc.ruralinstitute.umt.edu/geography/
  2. Choose your state
  3. Choose the counties you would like to focus on (these maybe a combination of rural and urban counties to make comparisons)
  4. Choose variables you are interested in such as the Disability Poverty Rate or the Veteran Disability Rate
  5. Submit your choices to view the statistics

For example, After selecting two neighboring counties in Montana (Ravalli, a rural county and Missoula, an urban county), we can see that the disability rate for veterans in Ravalli county is 42% while the disability rate for veterans in Missoula County is 29%.

Learning About How People are Connecting

You can begin to find out how people are connecting by reaching out to well connected individuals in the community and asking them how they find out about activities or community resources. For example, are there civic organizations such as the Lions Club or more informal gatherings like book clubs or knitting groups? Is there a local newspaper? Do people put notes in the local utility bills? How much do people rely on word of mouth or social media?

Another strategy is to ask your rural consumers how they find out about things in their community.

Activity: Have coffee with a connected person

Find someone who is connected in the community. This might be the local grocery store owner or the volunteer that runs the food pantry. Give them a phone call, introduce yourself and ask to have coffee with them! Ask how they have been able to reach out and connect in the community.

Activity: Ask a rural consumer

Ask a consumer how they found the resources they found. This can give you an idea of the events that are best to attend and the best way to advertise online (e.g., with social media).

Activity: Attend a community event without an agenda, with a consumer

Ask a consumer if you can join them for an event. Leave the brochures at the office and attend as a listener. The consumer might want to introduce you to other consumers there. It’s important not to give them a pitch, but instead to listen openly about their thoughts and concerns.

Doing a Community Scan

The built environment in rural communities often determines if and how people can participate.

A network is a group of individuals from organizations, businesses, and government offices who interact with each other, usually around a common issue or goal. Coming together allows for members to pool resources, identify gaps in services, and support each other’s efforts. This can improve services, build new systems, and increase the resiliency of the rural services.

There are many existing rural networks, although not all exist in all rural areas.

What does institutionalization look like in your community? Are there nursing homes? Group homes? Prisons? Where do people with disabilities live?

Joining Existing Networks

Who and what would be most beneficial to engage with? Here are a few tips!

  • Think outside of disability-specific events (e.g. homelessness coalitions or the Chamber of Commerce).
  • Ask community and organization leaders what meetings or events they have going on and if you can join, even to just sit and listen.
  • Collaborate on grants with other organizations (e.g. for food pantry funding or for county transportation funding)
  • You can also seek out non-traditional community commonplaces, such as a laundromat or a bar!
  • Consider the financial background or resources of who you are meeting with – for example, someone might not feel comfortable meeting at a restaurant or coffee shop because of the cost. Consider having first meetings at libraries, parks, or community centers where there is not a cost involved.
  • Some communities have senior lunches or other free food events that you can attend!

It is a great idea to keep track of the connections you have made and the networks you are working with. This “Network Rolodex” can come in handy for future projects. You might also have the opportunity to help connect other centers with the connections you have made to help your community work more collaboratively!

Barriers, Challenges, and Solutions

Some potential barriers to anticipate is that people have limited time and finances to contribute to your efforts. As a newer person doing outreach, you may also feel a lack of reach, especially at first. You may also encounter different perspectives on Independent Living, shelter workshops, and the value of institutionalization. Finally, as a disability advocate, you may experience some political pushback to changing how things have “always been done” a certain way.

Some common solutions for overcoming barriers and challenges are to stayed focused, being flexible, emphasizing working together, embracing diversity, finding compromises, and maintaining optimism.

Activity: Assessing Community Dynamics

Sometimes it is helpful to reflect on common barriers and challenges that can arise in doing rural outreach and networking. Below is an activity adapted from the Engaging Your Community Toolkit for Partnership, Collaboration, and Action that can help you think about these factors. You can reflect on the components independently or in a group.

For your community, the dynamics are:

  1. There are adequate public dollars available to address issues. True or False
  2. Issues related to community living are the responsibility of our local community. True or False
  3. There are people in the community ready to take the lead add addressing issues related to community living. True or False
  4. Collaboration and interdependence will be important in addressing these issues. True or False
  5. Strategies and tools exist to develop plans and to work together to address independent living needs for people with disabilities. True or False
  6. Community involvement is not dependent on just a few organizations. True or False
  7. Our community embraces diversity – ethnically, economically, racially, or in other ways. True or False

Each true answer can be scored as 1 point. Higher scores mean that your community is more ready for a collaborative approach to addressing community living issues for people with disabilities. What is your score?