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Together for Hope
Jason Coker is the President for Together for Hope, a rural development coalition. Coker is building a nationwide coalition of nonprofits in the 339 counties of persistent rural poverty. This coalition uses asset-based community development to create socio-economic transformation across rural America by focusing on education, health & nutrition, housing & environment, and social enterprise—Together for Hope’s Priorities of Hope. The interventions, innovations, and advocacy positions that Coker leads provides a holistic approach to poverty relief and community development across rural America.
The compartmentalized self is a divided self, so how does one become whole? This question, while it sounds hippy-dippy and more relevant for a Sedona crystal retreat, is vitally important for people in business. There has always been large numbers of people in the business word who were “successful but lost” because of the divided self. How can the intersection of the personal and the professional be mutually beneficial?
Together for Hope (TFH) works in the 339 counties of persistent rural poverty in the U.S. Using asset-based community development, TFH asks communities what they have rather than what they need. By focusing on what is good in these communities, community leaders are able to leverage their assets to create new futures. In this space, hope is not some fluffy emotion; it is a hard-headed persistence in doing good. As one poet suggests, “hope is a sewer rat.”