The room was deliberately diverse at the exploratory meeting for the Appalachia Funders Network (AFN) in 2010, as a mix of foundations, government agencies and analysts, progressive organizers, community economic development innovators, and elected officials came together for the first time. With the War on Coal waning but still alive in the region’s political culture, we weren’t sure how the Appalachian Transition narrative would land. As Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’s Burt Lauderdale wrapped up his presentation about the extractive nature of the coal economy (usually considered “fighting words”), a federal economic development official from West Virginia stood up. You could have heard a pin drop as he asked Burt to show the slide of poverty levels in West Virginia and Kentucky over the past 50 years. “Now, I’m pro-coal,” he said, and we all held our breath. “But I see how coal has created jobs but didn’t leave wealth in the region. We’ve got to do something different.” We exhaled and realized that we were witnessing a shift from old divisions to alignment around a different economic future for the region. That slide, which became known as the “big red dot,” (see image below) has kept AFN and others focused on addressing economic opportunity in persistently poor counties – the “hills and hollers” of Appalachia – for more than a decade.

THEMES