Appalachian Regional Commission

In 1965, Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act (ARDA), which declared that the Appalachian region of the U.S., while abundant in natural resources and rich in potential, lags behind the rest of the nation in its economic growth and that its people have not shared properly in the nation’s prosperity.

Fifty-six years later, Appalachia remains abundant in natural resources and rich in potential but unfortunately harbors some of the same persistent economic disparities Congress cited in 1965 when enacting the ARDA, the precursor to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). Today, it is not the lack of a physical highway that holds Appalachia back but the lack of a broadband highway.

The idea behind the ARC stemmed from then presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s campaign visit to West Virginia in the 1960s. He witnessed firsthand the poverty caused by isolation from a highway system. When Kennedy was elected, he remembered his campaign stops through the rolling hills of the Mountain State and, in 1963, formally convened the President’s Appalachian Regional Commission. When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed ARDA into public law on March 9, 1965, the ARC was formally established as a unique federal-state partnership committed to strengthening Appalachia’s economy.

Today, the ARC includes 423 counties across the Appalachian Mountains, which encompasses 26 million people. On May 6, 2021, Gayle Manchin was sworn in as the ARC’s 13th federal co-chair, becoming the first ARC federal co-chair from West Virginia. An alumna of West Virginia University, Manchin worked as an educator in Marion County Schools, served on the faculty of Fairmont State University, directed the AmeriCorps Promise Fellows in West Virginia between 2000 and 2004 and implemented a statewide initiative, West Virginia Partnerships to Assure Student Success. In addition, Manchin previously served as West Virginia’s First Lady between 2005 and 2010. She was appointed to serve as a member of the state board of education, serving her last two years as president.

“I see education as the foundation of anything we do. Whether it is workforce development or improving the quality of life in a community or family, it begins with education,” Manchin says. “When I look at grants or projects from the ARC, I ask where they are working in education and how we can streamline and continue that process to make it easier for students to move from K-12 to post-secondary education and then into the workforce, all the while being the most efficient and effective.”

Manchin’s top priorities as ARC federal co-chair are to support the creation of economic opportunities in the Appalachian region, improve broadband access and critical infrastructure in Appalachian communities and address the region’s opioid crisis. Nominated by President Joe Biden, Manchin works directly with ARC’s 13 member governors, program managers and a network of local development districts to build community capacity and strengthen economic growth throughout Appalachia.

“While wider broadband network initiatives have been in the works for years, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the immediate and crucial role access to internet has in Appalachia,” Manchin says. “I think it is ironic that the ARC started out as a highway project and now, this many years later, the more critical factor is the broadband highway, and that is just as essential as the scenic highway was in 1965.”

According to Manchin, at the onset of the pandemic, many students could not attend class virtually, many parents could not work from home and many people could not access telehealth services due to lack of internet access.

“We realized, again, the inequities within our Appalachian regional system—we couldn’t access vital needs for schooling, work and health, which we needed in order to move forward,” she says. “We are a global world now, and if we expect our children and adults to be able to compete in a global society, then they have to be able to connect to the internet.”

In much the same way building I-68 and I-79 was a challenging project due to Appalachia’s terrain, reaching rural communities with broadband internet service is made more difficult by the very mountains the region holds dear.

“The other inequity we find so often is making broadband reach out to the last mile. There may only be two families out at the end of that hollow, but those two families need internet the same way people in downtown Charleston need internet, and they deserve it,” Manchin says. “The good thing is, with the money the president has put into infrastructure, broadband is certainly a part of that. It is expensive, but I think if the states and the providers can come together, we ought to be able to find a way to do it more efficiently than trying to do it community by community.”

Outside of access to the internet being a necessity of a 21st century lifestyle, lack of broadband access can result in a lack of medical care, especially in rural areas.

“The bigger issue addressed in helping support broadband is supporting telehealth because in many of these communities, especially within that last mile, if people need medical help, it may be an hour or hour and a half drive to the nearest health facility. To be able to connect through the internet could be a lifesaver for many of these people or certainly help,” Manchin says. “Health care is a big issue because of the rural nature of the Appalachian region. Many rural hospitals have had to close due to high cost and lack of staff, so the ARC tries to be effective in several ways in terms of encouraging training in health care fields.”

Part of the ARC’s job creation and entrepreneurship initiatives are focused on supporting the creation, growth and access to capital for businesses in the health care sector, which will both expand access to care and diversify local economies. An example of this diversification is Future of Nursing West Virginia, a recent recipient of one of ARC’s Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization, or POWER, grants. POWER grants go toward helping revitalize coal-impacted communities around Appalachia. The major contributors to these efforts are community colleges, hospitals, chambers of commerce and workforce investment boards. Future of Nursing West Virginia uses its grant to help launch and sustain nurse-owned businesses in West Virginia’s coal-impacted communities.

“The best part of this job is my opportunity to go visit not only projects here in West Virginia that the ARC is involved in but also the other 13 states. I am trying to balance my time between learning more about how the ARC works and meeting the staff and also traveling,” Manchin says. “I get to visit projects that the ARC is partnering with. It is heartwarming when you see the appreciation of people who have been able to turn around a community, bring a facility back to life or bring a new industry into an area, which brings more people into the region to live. There is nothing more heartwarming than that because those are real lives. When people talk about workforce development, workforce development is about people. It is not a thing, it is people.”

Manchin says she is focused on how to raise the quality of life, level of services and access in Appalachia so its residents have the same opportunities and products as everyone else.

“I think the Appalachian Regional Commission has been very modest in the past,” Manchin says. “There were certainly a lot of things I did not know about it, but now we have an expanded communication team, which they did not have in the past. I think the Appalachian Regional Commission has a wonderful story to tell.”

While Manchin is helping the ARC expand its impact and accomplish great feats, she feels her greatest accomplishment is becoming a mother to her three children and grandmother to 10 grandchildren.

“While raising my children, the message I always wanted them to remember was we are very blessed. It was not about them or what I could do for them or what somebody else could do for them,” Manchin says. “What they needed to do was look out and see what they could do for someone else. It might just be to pat someone on the back, smile at someone or say something nice to somebody, but you ought to be able to make a difference in somebody’s life in a positive direction every day. If I have helped do that in some way, if I have been a part of a team that has helped make that happen for families, then to me, I have accomplished my goal.”