The Fulcrum Project is a collaboration between the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, and the West Virginia Community Development Hub to establish connections with current and former Hub Communities. The Fulcrum Project is supported through funding from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation. The Fulcrum Project seeks to connect communities to the academy's resources through partnership development. It connects students, communities, and expert faculty to solve the challenges of rural communities, building capacities towards positive change. There are many challenges facing rural West Virginia communities: environmental, social, and economic. The Fulcrum project's asset-based planning approach focuses on leveraging existing strengths, community connections, and identified community needs to pair groups of interdisciplinary students with motivated and innovative faculty to envision positive community change and empower local leaders toward progress. This work builds on the need to work with disenfranchised and underserved populations (Hester, 2006; Thering, 2007; Sanoff, 2010) through service-learning projects (Butler, 2019; Angotti, Doble & Horrigan, 2012; Bose, Horrigan, Doble, & Shipp, 2014) designed to increase citizen control, delegate power, and form partnerships (Arnstein's "Ladder of Citizen Participation," 1969). Through partnerships for capacity-building, eligible communities worked with the West Virginia Community Development Hub and its community coaching programs, such as Cultivate, HubCap, and Blueprint. Through capacity-building initiatives, the Fulcrum Project integrated design and planning with well-established key stakeholder groups in communities. Since its inception, The Fulcrum Project has benefitted 30 community projects in rural West Virginia. Many students from various backgrounds have been involved with the Fulcrum Project. Community design projects completed through the Fulcrum Project primarily included environmental design within marginal landscapes: floodplains, brownfields, empty downtown lots, and buildings. Communities partnered with faculty and students from landscape architecture, interior architecture, and other disciplines to create solutions to enhance community health, equity, sustainability, and resilience. The designs have led to investment in communities that turn liabilities into assets. Evaluation of the Fulcrum Project includes student learning outcomes tied to citizen leadership and transformative learning (Mezirow, 2011). Community capital (Flora and Flora, 2018) outcomes are measured through pre- and post-engagement surveys and interviews to measure the long-term viability and sustainability of implemented projects. Acknowledgements: Project funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation With support from: USDA NIFA Hatch Project NE 1962: Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Other Green Environments: Understanding Human and Community Benefits and Mechanisms & USDA NIFA Hatch Project WVA00709: Trans-Disciplinary Approach to Community Planning and Development for Heritage and Recreation Tourism
