{"id":844,"date":"2011-08-18T16:08:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T20:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=844"},"modified":"2011-09-21T17:48:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T21:48:08","slug":"rural-nh-childcare-centers-get-a-pair-of-federal-grants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/08\/18\/rural-nh-childcare-centers-get-a-pair-of-federal-grants\/","title":{"rendered":"Rural NH Childcare Centers Get A Pair Of Federal Grants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a busy week on the rural economy beat, thanks to President Obama&#8217;s <a title=\"President Announces New Jobs Initiatives for Rural America\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2011\/08\/16\/president-announces-new-jobs-initiatives-rural-america\" target=\"_blank\">newly-released rural jobs initiative<\/a>.\u00a0 As part of that push today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a series of rural development grants and loans awarded to states as part of the clunkily-named &#8220;<a title=\"Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces Support to Create Jobs, Improve Health and Safety for Rural Americans in 31 States and Puerto Rico\" href=\"http:\/\/usda.gov\/wps\/portal\/usda\/usdahome?contentid=2011\/08\/0370.xml&amp;navid=NEWS_RELEASE&amp;navtype=RT&amp;parentnav=LATEST_RELEASES&amp;edeployment_action=retrievecontent\" target=\"_blank\">USDA Rural Development&#8217;s Community Facilities Program.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 The idea, Vilsack said, was to stimulate rural economies by offering short-term construction jobs and longer-term work to maintenance contractors.\u00a0 The Community Facilities program is financing a wide variety of construction and upgrades for schools, childcare centers, hospitals and emergency services.<\/p>\n<p>All told, about $55 million in funding\u00a0was\u00a0spread out over 31 states and Puerto Rico.\u00a0 New Hampshire scored $38,000 in grants.<!--more-->Bear Camp Valley Pre-School in the town of Tamworth, west of White Lake State Park, got $10,500 to improve energy efficiency.\u00a0 And Tiny Twisters Child Care Center in Franklin got another $27,500 to buy furniture, appliances and playground equipment.<\/p>\n<p>The take in other New England states includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Vermont: 2 grants, totalling $50,700<\/li>\n<li>Maine: 1 grant for $10,500<\/li>\n<li>Massachusetts:\u00a0 2 loans exceeding $2.2 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>During a conference call with media today, Vilsack spent a lot of time answering questions specific to the Midwest.\u00a0 When State Impact asked about how the USDA is focusing on New England specifically, he said, in part,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_846\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has been busy this week, pushing President Obama's new rural jobs initiative.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/121249467.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-846\" title=\"Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (2nd L\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/121249467-300x295.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"295\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/121249467-300x295.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/121249467-620x611.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/121249467-60x60.jpg 60w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/121249467-220x216.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Jim Watson \/ AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has been busy this week, pushing President Obama&#39;s new rural jobs initiative.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;We\u2019re also looking for additional opportunities to partner&#8230;New England states obviously know a great deal about.\u00a0 Outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing, biking, skiing, etc, are a major component of our strategy to rebuild the rural economy.\u00a0 And so to the extent that we reinvest resources in better maintaining our forests, as we are doing, and then expanding those opportunities by working with the private sector, non-profit sector, to invest their dollars into proper forest management, it just enhances opportunities for recreation&#8230;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a busy week on the rural economy beat, thanks to President Obama&#8217;s newly-released rural jobs initiative.\u00a0 As part of that push today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a series of rural development grants and loans awarded to states as part of the clunkily-named &#8220;USDA Rural Development&#8217;s Community Facilities Program.&#8221;\u00a0 The idea, Vilsack said, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[54],"tags":[522,525,85,146,145,533,118,510],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}