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Sign up to attend Annual Spring Resilient Communities Research Symposium

You’re invited to the WVU Center for Resilient Communities’ Spring 2025 Resilient Communities Internship Research Symposium. 20 exceptional undergraduate students from the sixth annual internship cohort will present the results of their action research in collaboration with community-based organizations across the state of West Virginia.

Join us Friday, April 25, on the 3rd floor atrium of Brooks Hall from 9-11 a.m. Please register with this link.

Community Economies and Regional Development focuses on building local wealth and promoting just pathways to sustainable development at regional, national, and global level with creativity, cooperation, and solidarity.  Projects include: 

  • Take me Home? Understanding Welcome Corps Private Refugee Resettlement through West Virginia Communities – This project centers on West Virginia specifically to explore how the Welcome Corps functions in the lives of community members who engage in the private resettlement of refugees. 
  • Confronting Housing Challenges for Sustainable and Equitable Development in West Virginia: Advancing Affordable Housing Initiatives – Through spatial analysis and community storytelling, we study how cooperative housing initiatives contribute to community solidarity and wellbeing. 
  • Neighborhood Economic Development at the Grassroots – Despite challenges from deindustrialization, the opioid crisis, and systemic inequities, Fairfield, a historically Black neighborhood in Huntington, West Virginia, demonstrates how marginalized communities develop cooperative survival strategies. We focus on supporting Unlimited Futures Incorporated, a Black-led business incubator whose community impact extends beyond economic development.
  • Establishing The Creative Network: WV's Arts Entrepreneur Ecosystem Project – This project seeks to map a network of artists and creative initiatives in West Virginia in support of the Tamarack Foundation for the Arts. 
  • Transforming our Communities: The Impact of Hub Coaching Programs – This project collaborates with the WV Community Development Hub to evaluate the long-term impact of its community coaching programs in four West Virginia cities: Richwood, Princeton, Hinton, and Petersburg.
  • Developing a Colfax WV Senior Program – This project will develop a senior support network in Colfax, WV, where 37% of residents are over 55 years old and most households earn under $50,000 annually.
  • Increasing Young Adult's Capacities for Engaging in Intergroup Storytelling – By teaching active story listening skills, young adults will collect older adults' resilience narratives while building intergenerational empathy and understanding.
Environmental Justice and Climate Action focuses on building communities with safe, healthy, and equitable environments where residents are prepared to address past degradation and future hazards related to industrial development and climate vulnerabilities. Projects include: 

  • The Relationship between Flood Vulnerability, Hope, and Resilience on the Cheat River – This project develops collaborative flood vulnerability assessments and resilience plans with communities in West Virginia's Cheat watershed.
  • Youth-Led Flood Resiliency Planning – The Resilience Ambassadors Program equips West Virginia high school students with tools to address flooding, the state's most prevalent natural hazard. 
  • Mapping Petrochemical Communities in West Virginia and the Ohio River Valley – Through research, the West Virginia Environment and Society Lab is documenting legacy and emerging petrochemical hazards while building a resource hub connecting environmental justice communities and advocacy groups. 
  • Improving Reach, Presence and Scale of Friends of Deckers Creek – Friends of Deckers Creek (FODC) is a local non-profit organization working to transform the heavily polluted Deckers Creek from a community liability into an asset through restoration, education, and promotion of clean water practices. 
  • Mapping of septic/sewage risks in the Tygart Valley River watershed – Through mapping unconnected homes, estimating system ages, and conducting tests, the Save the Tygart Watershed Association aims to identify and prioritize communities most in need of wastewater treatment modernization. 
  • Building an Environmental/Ecological Stewardship Education Program – The Buckhannon River Watershed Association is launching a pilot educational program to train participants in environmental stewardship and community organization skills. 
Food System Transformation focuses on addressing food system inequalities, supporting community-driven structures for equitable food system development, and promoting regenerative agriculture, food sovereignty and the “right to food” in Appalachia and beyond. 

  • Amplifying Voices of Hunger WV – Voices of Hunger is a community dedicated to advancing food as a human right in West Virginia through storytelling, mutual aid, and advocacy at all levels of government.  
  • Exploring The Right to Food Advocacy Landscape in the United States – The National Right to Food Community of Practice (CoP), formed in 2021, unites advocates, legal experts, organizers, and food producers to strengthen U.S. food and farm policy and advocacy. 
  • Growing WV Farm to School – The overarching purpose of the Farm to School project is to provide an analysis and report of opportunities and barriers to advancing Farm to School initiatives in West Virginia.