Richwood Model Brings Post-Flood Volunteerism to 18 Appalachian Communities

The West Virginia Community Development Hub is taking a model tested in Richwood, West Virginia, into 18 flood-impacted communities across central Appalachia. The premise is that the volunteerism and mutual aid that appear after a disaster do not have to disappear when relief organizations leave. With the right support, Katie Loudin argued, that energy can become resident power, durable civic infrastructure, and long-term disaster and economic resilience.

The two-year Trust in Practice project will involve the West Virginia Community Development Hub in West Virginia, the Mountain Association in Eastern Kentucky, Appalachian Voices in North Carolina and Virginia, and Reimagine Appalachia. Loudin framed the work as a test of whether post-flood engagement and the trust built through shared recovery can be sustained beyond the immediate crisis.

Richwood is the working example. The Hub was already working with the town — a former coal and timber community of about 2,000 people and a gateway to the Monongahela National Forest — when a devastating flood hit southern West Virginia in 2016. The water came off the hills and through the downtown corridor. The town lost its remaining businesses and many homes. Municipal officials were overwhelmed by volunteers, donations, and disaster-management requirements; eventually, they were charged with misuse of relief funds. The local school was closed and scheduled for consolidation, with children facing a bus ride over the mountain to the other side of the county that could take up to an hour.

The question after the response phase was not simply how to replace damaged buildings. It was what to do when relief organizations were gone, volunteers had returned home, storefronts were empty, some residents had left, and the people who remained were exhausted. In the Hub’s telling, that is when the work that mattered most began.

The broader Appalachian context was set by Heather Foster, who connected present-day flooding to her own family history on an island in the Ohio River. Her grandfather moved there at 18 with his young wife, farmed for three decades without electricity or running water, and relied on cousins, neighbors, and friends when floodwaters rose. The family moved animals into the second story of the barn and got to the mainland for safety; eventually, floods forced them out and changed their lives. Recent slides showed the pattern continuing across the region: Eastern Kentucky in July 2022, including Appalshop underwater in Whitesburg; Asheville and Chimney Rock, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene in September 2024; and southern West Virginia in 2016.

The Hub’s work in Richwood was not to impose a finished recovery plan. Its mission, as presented on screen, is to improve quality of life by empowering local leaders, building collaboration, amplifying community stories, and tackling barriers to development. In disaster recovery, that meant rebuilding not only physical infrastructure but civic infrastructure that could withstand future shocks.

Heather Foster said the Hub’s model grew out of more than 17 years of community work. It begins with a deliberately simple question: “What do you like most about your town?” From there, the Hub helps form a core leadership team made up of residents who have asked to work with it. That team identifies what it wants the town to become, then asks neighbors and friends to join the process.

The presentation’s five-phase model described a sequence: team building, shared visioning, prioritization and planning, project activation, and launching projects. Around those phases are two constant functions: intentional community engagement, through which residents build capacity to identify and plan community and economic-development projects, and consistent coaching and support, including connections to partners, funders, and financing.

In Richwood, the priorities were concrete. Residents wanted restaurants downtown. They wanted a coffee shop. They wanted a trail connecting downtown businesses to a nearby recreation area. They wanted lodging for visitors coming to the Cherry River Festival. The importance was not only the list of projects, but the act of making it: residents asked one another what they wanted, made lists, set priorities, and began working together.

With the Hub’s help, dozens of regional partners, and thousands of volunteer hours, Richwood began accumulating what the Hub calls “small wins.” Residents addressed dilapidated properties, attracted developers and small businesses, and started filling vacant downtown spaces. One larger result was an abandoned mine lands grant of almost $1.3 million to connect downtown Richwood to the nearby national forest through an extension of the Cranberry Tri-Rivers Rail Trail.

The Hub describes itself as a rural civic hub: an intermediary that supports local communities and connects them to outside resources. The work depends on long commitments, respect for local history and ways of life, and an asset-based view of place. Small coordinated actions give residents practice working together. Over time, visible progress gives other people a reason to believe momentum is real and to join.

The Hub’s theory of trust is practical rather than abstract. People build trust by doing things together, especially when the work produces visible results. Katie Loudin tied that premise to the Hub’s participation in the 2024 Trust for Civic Life Community Survey, which found that “taking action together with other community members was closely tied to feelings of trust, agency, and belonging.”

Other survey findings from rural hubs reinforced the Hub’s operating assumptions. Local institutions were trusted more than regional and national institutions. Formal versus informal participation in civic groups mattered less than whether participation was action-oriented. Education did not determine leadership in rural places.

That last point is central to the Hub’s view of rural civic life. Loudin said rural communities do not have enough people to leave potential leaders unused: “We don’t have enough people in rural places to afford to have people sitting on the bench.” Leadership capacity has to be treated as widely distributed, not reserved for people with formal credentials or institutional titles.

The Trust in Practice project is an attempt to extend that logic across central Appalachia. The goal is to sustain post-flood volunteerism and civic engagement long enough for crisis response to become a standing base of local leadership. In the Hub’s terms, the task is to convert the trust formed through shared emergency work into durable civic infrastructure.

Richwood’s recovery is the Hub’s clearest evidence that small wins can become larger civic and economic change. Heather Foster said residents had once wondered whether they should “all just leave and the last person out turn out their lights.” Instead, they chose to lean in, use available resources, and work with the Hub.

Over five years, Foster said, Richwood opened 50 thriving downtown businesses. Residents started Art Walk Richwood, which eventually led to a downtown art gallery. They opened award-winning restaurants. The volunteers who had said they wanted a coffee shop got Rosewood Coffee.

The school fight became the most important civic outcome. Foster credited residents with keeping the school in the heart of the community and pointed to the new Cherry River Elementary facility. Richwood no longer needs the Hub’s active support, she said, but knows the Hub will be there if called. The Richwood Dreamers, the local volunteer team, still meet regularly and ask what comes next for the town.

Katie Loudin said Richwood is not the only case. The Hub has done similar work in Buckhannon, Princeton, Matewan, New Martinsville, White Sulphur Springs, and more than 100 communities across West Virginia. Its role is to help communities develop their own assets and help local leaders advance their own visions — “one leader, one holler, one community, one neighborhood at a time.”