More than 30 presenters from multiple organizations participated Friday in the Global Pathways for a Thriving Rural Workforce event at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.
The panel discussions focused on rural Pennsylvania and included representatives from education and housing to immigration and population. Population density has decreased in the state, and rural areas are looking to international residents to fill open jobs.
The first of its kind symposium was a collaboration between Dr. Kyle Kopko, the executive director for The Center for Rural Pennsylvania, and his colleagues from the Tides Foundation and Brookings Institution.
“We thought this would be a great way of bringing together experts from a wide range of fields to share information and best practices so that way if rural stakeholders wanted to learn more about the incorporation of international residents into their community, they would have a better sense of what questions to ask, what resources were available and other individuals they could connect with to better understand these strategies,” Kopko explained.
The US State Department and World Learning funded the symposium, according to Kopko. Each entity collectively engaged in state department exchange programs prior to the symposium. Kopko and his colleagues wanted to highlight the current state of rural life.
“All of us had an interest in rural affairs, international affairs. Given population changes that we’ve seen in rural Pennsylvania, but also in rural communities throughout the United States, we realized that international residents were comprising an increasingly larger segment of the population. That was something we wanted to learn a little bit more about, particularly in light of workforce challenges and pressures that a lot of our communities are facing,” he said.
The Center for Rural Pennsylvania serves as a “think tank” for the General Assembly, according to Kopko. They are a bipartisan office, serving both the PA House and Senate. They provide data and information for policy makers, so they can craft appropriate legislation and policy to meet the needs of rural communities. The Center also supplies information to county commissioners, municipal officials, school board directors, nonprofit groups and business entities.
