BRACK: A shot in the arm here, but South needs more help

By Andy Brack | Talk about a shot in the arm for the southern rural counties of South Carolina. Witness the just-announced federal Promise Zone designation for a six-county area centering on Allendale County that should pump in millions of dollars of aid over the next 10 years.

But let’s be clear: It’s a hand-up, not a handout for people in the zone area of Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties. There’s a lot of hard work ahead for these counties, nonprofits, government agencies and businesses that are part of the effort to generate more jobs, improve education, reduce crime and get more affordable housing in a region where 28.1 percent of 90,000 residents live in poverty.

It’s not a handout because there’s not a big pot of money that instantly goes with the federal Promise Zone designation. Instead, the SouthernCarolina Alliance, the Barnwell-based economic development nonprofit that will coordinate the effort, will get five Americorps VISTA staffers to recruit and manage volunteers. These professionals also will provide much-needed expertise to help to write grant applications for existing federal grant programs.

In other words, these areas now will have help tapping into federal money and other opportunities to help achieve the Zone’s goals to grow jobs and reduce poverty. And when Zone counties apply for grants in more than 30 federal programs, they’ll be able to get a few extra points in the scoring process that should help them get grants that they may not have qualified for in the past.

So while there’s not big money now, it’s likely in the future, as highlighted by the success over the last 16 months by the only other rural area awarded a Promise Zone designation — an eight-county area in southeastern Kentucky. So far, its Promise Zone has generated more than $50 million dollars for new projects. An example of its success is how the Knox County Hospital in Barbourville is using federal funding to expand medical care services for 31,883 rural people and add more than 200 jobs. There’s also a new $20 million grant for a pilot project to help people receiving food assistance find jobs and work toward self-sufficiency.

The bottom line for South Carolina: There’s about to be a huge infusion in financial aid to the counties at the southern tip of the state where unemployment approaches 15 percent. Because of the unified vision of the zone counties, people’s lives and living conditions should get much better.

Critics will try to rain on the hope of South Carolina’s new Promise Zone. They’ll complain that the private sector — and not government intervention — should lead transformation of pervasively poor areas.

Question: So how’s that been working for, say, the last 150 years? If the private sector is the savior for people who live in these rural areas, why isn’t their economy better? The answer, of course, is that most of South Carolina simply forgot these areas as people moved in droves to metropolitan areas.

But now Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties have a new lease on life with the Obama Administration’s practical mechanism for local governments, nonprofits, universities and businesses like banks to work together to generate more economic activity.

The bittersweet note about this week’s Promise Zone announcement is how so many other impoverished parts of America need the same kind of help. In the second round of Promise Zone designations, there were 123 applications from across the country, but only eight were awarded. In the final round of designations next year, seven more zones will be announced.

Across the South, there’s a swath of poor counties — an area we call the Southern Crescent — that swings from the Tidewater region of Virginia south along Interstate 95 in the Carolinas. It shifts across middle Georgia and Alabama and turns north to the Mississippi Delta and part of Arkansas. This soft underbelly of the American South is home to millions who have been underserved for generations. People who live here tend to be more impoverished, have a higher rate of joblessness and a higher than normal incidence of a wide range of health problems.

They, too, need Promise Zones. They, too, need a hand up to slough off the shackles of being forgotten.