Shining Light on Rural Realities

The Rural Visibility Project is a yearlong campaign designed to center rural priorities through community-driven dialogue between local, state, and regional entities. This organizing strategy, powered by rural people and structured around monthly themes, shifts public attention to the realities, concerns, and possibilities that matter in the places we call home.

Purpose of the Project: To spark consistent, sustained, community led conversations grounded in real data and lived experience. With the support of monthly topic experts and rural people sharing out information on- and offline, these conversations aim to generate more rurally informed solutions, policies, and decisions, while also fostering greater local action and leadership on each issue.

Through the project, we hope to see greater awareness of the need for rural policy expertise and focus in the PNW, an increase in understanding of rural issues and approaches, stronger connections between local action and state-level policy makers, and more rural people engaged in local and state advocacy and policymaking.

Monthly Discussion Themes

January – Rural Health Access and Affordability
February – Rural Capacity, Leadership, and Information
March – Infrastructure, Energy, and Broadband
April – Rural Economic Models and Industry Sectors
May – Wildfire Response and Resiliency & Public Safety
June – Housing Access and Affordability
July – Small Business, Downtowns, Arts and Recreation
August – Education, Labor, and Workforce
September – Mental Health, Caregiving, and Family Services
October – Access to Capital, Funding, and Rural Philanthropy
November – Rural and Tribal Heritage, Arts, and Culture
December – Conservation, Land Use, and Water

The Rural Visibility Project will soft launch in October 2025 with a focus on Rural Economic Models. The official launch of the Rural Visibility Project will occur January 2026.

How to Engage with the Rural Visibility Project

Issue Leaders: Issue Leaders are individuals and representatives of organizations that have knowledge and expertise in a monthly topic. They will:

  • Decide what highlighted topics and focuses
  • What key questions or needs exist
  • Provide data and share information on key events related to the monthly topic
  • Showcase success stories and discuss solutions that have worked and failed
  • Help RDI identify and engage local storytellers, key players and policy makers
  • Lead information sharing on social media – posting 2 times a week on the topic and potentially help us train local storytellers
  • Co-host the culminating virtual conversation event (this includes design and implementation)

Rural Champions: Rural Champions are anyone who lives, serves, or supports rural areas and are interested in learning more about a specific monthly topic and helping spread information online to their networks. They also have opportunities to engage with others who care about the same issue topics throughout the year. Rural Champions are highly encouraged to attend informational sessions for their topic month of choice: these virtual gatherings will be hosted by RDI to provide information and toolkits, and to be available for questions. These virtual sessions will be scheduled three weeks in advance of the beginning of each month.

Click here to Register for our Rural Economy and Industry session on August 11th at 1pm

Have questions or need more information? Contact kschaffer (at) rdiinc.org.

MEET OUR TEAM

Heidi Khokhar

Executive Director
hkhokhar (at) rdiinc.org

Kendra Schaffer

Networks and Engagement Manager
kschaffer (at) rdiinc.org

Hannah Lewis

Program Manager
hlewis (at) rdiinc.org

Alison Cassin

Outreach and Program Coordinator
acassin (at) rdiinc.orrg