"I’m worried about rural places"

“Can you take a look at the data file and let me know if the drop-downs are working for you?”
“Actually, no. The file is too big for my DSL…”

I’m worried about rural places.

To be fair, I’m always worried about rural places. I worry about equity in access, because rural communities do not start from the same place as their urban and suburban counterparts. Usually my concern is focused on rural access to energy programs, but right now its that, along with access to heath care, and access to internet.

In my experience, there’s a misconception that all Californian’s have access to high speed internet; as long as your work allows you to work from home, you can. However, the snippet of my conversation with one of my colleagues in the Sierra’s is pretty representative of the rural experience. In order for her to work in the same file I am, she has to drive 45 minutes into her office, which she can’t do, because the office is closed. The digital divide is a barrier in normal times, but when business and programs are moving towards virtual delivery more and more rural communities will be left behind. How will energy efficiency programs reach rural communities when rural implementers can’t access necessary files?

The SJVCEO is in a bit of a bind. We’ve made a successful transition to digital offerings, and all of you are engaging with us enthusiastically. Thank you for that by the way! But we know who we’re not reaching. We are not reaching our communities. We’re not reaching residents in hyper-rural areas, largely because we can’t. 

Typically, we hold community events and workshops.  We canvass business districts.  We go face to face. That’s been the key to our success—we love to be with people in the places others in this industry don’t care to go. Going forward for the foreseeable future, we can’t. So what happens to those communities?

We don’t know, but we are committed to finding a solution. Rural places are and will continue to be disproportionally marginalized through the course of this pandemic and it is our collective responsibility to double down on investing our time and resources to those areas once this is over, or at least better contained. We have a long road ahead of rebuilding trust and relationships, but our purpose is to serve, and we will.

I’m not going to stop worrying about rural places. I just hope more of our industry starts worrying too.

Learn more about rural issues—please-- from these two excellent sources:
https://www.dailyyonder.com/
https://sjvrdc.com/