Facts That Matter Blog
Facts That Matter Blog
Collaboration in the Face of Crisis: The Keys to Economic Recovery from COVID-19
The project team outlined two major, interconnected issues facing communities during the COVID-19 pandemic: hospitality employment and parents departing the workforce. The hospitality industry is one of the hardest hit industries given business closures, reduced capacity, and low consumer confidence. Hospitality employment plummeted in April 2020 and has yet to recover. In North Carolina, September 2020 sector employment was still about 20% lower than September 2019. Underlying this issue is the struggle to reopen businesses safely and improve consumer confidence.
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Rural Coworking Spaces – Wilson County (Blog)
Coworking spaces are popular in metropolitan areas but can also serve as a solution to many challenges that entrepreneurs may face in a rural area. Wilson is one such rural community with a solution—a coworking space called the Gig East Exchange.
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Shifting Manufacturing to PPE Production – Alexander, Burke, Catawba, and Mecklenburg Counties (Blog)
The spike in demand for PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a shortage, leaving many healthcare workers and other front-line workers at risk. In response, the Carolina Textile District, a regional manufacturer’s network, shifted their production to PPE.
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Tax Preparation and the Earned Income Tax Credit in Rural America
Only about 80% of eligible individuals nationally claim the EITC, and folks living in rural areas are less likely to do so than those in urban areas. Given its importance to impoverished communities, the ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government is working on a Rural EITC Uptake Project with Rural Forward NC, the UNC School of Social Work’s Jordan Institute for Families, and the NC Justice Center. This ongoing project is taking place in Beaufort, Edgecombe, Halifax, McDowell, Nash, Robeson, and Rockingham counties and is working to both understand the number of eligible individuals claiming the credit and reasons that the credit may go unclaimed.
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Designing Better Local Food Systems – Wake County (Blog)
North Carolina is the 10th hungriest state in the nation, with 604,000 households that do not have enough to eat. The Wake County Food Security Plan tackles hunger through a whole systems approach, examining not only hunger, but the social and economic context around the issue.
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Elder Abuse Prevention – Johnston County (Blog)
Elder abuse is a growing problem in the United States, with about 10% of elder adults abused in some way each year. Learn about how UNC School of Government faculty formed the North Carolina Elder Protection Network, and how Johnston County assembled a multidisciplinary team to combat elder abuse.
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Unwrapping the Information to Action Framework
The ncIMPACT Initiative has been collaborating with many of you leaders on the front lines, to learn how you have found effective paths forward during these once unimaginable circumstances. We have observed some relative consistency in the way decisions have been approached in communities across the state and the country. The Information to Action Framework distills our observations into a scaffolding that is usable and replicable, regardless of the size of your community or your available resources.
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The Great Migration? Small Town Economics and a COVID-19 Population Reshuffle
Small towns may not be able to compete with large and mid-sized cities in terms of major amenities, but small towns have unique assets on which they could capitalize. Place-based strategies contribute to the development of the community and may make that community more attractive for remote workers. Prior to the pandemic, workers craved communities with peer support groups and places to foster creativity. Co-working spaces and other entrepreneurial supports can help develop rural communities into thriving areas full of creative connections.
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Innovations in the Face of Crisis: Keys to Economic Recovery from COVID-19
The ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government and NCGrowth at the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise partner to identify strategies that will help local economies recover more quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic. Through robust data analysis, case studies, webinars, and peer learning sessions, NC local governments have access to some of the best economic recovery resources in the nation. Learn more about project findings and resources at https://go.unc.edu/KeystoRecovery. You may register for the final free webinar on Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. using this link: https://go.unc.edu/s2N4T.
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‘Tis the Season – 12 Days of Data
On December 22, our holiday gift to all of you will be an Information to Action Framework that we believe will be useful as your community charts its economic recovery from the pandemic. But first, over the next couple of weeks, we’ll share some of the data snapshots that comprise our composite metrics.
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