A few months ago, I visited some rural communities that are struggling. Deep among the rolling hills stood neglected fields, fallen barns, and empty houses. A once thriving farm economy lay fallow, leaving many people out of work. Nearly one in five individuals lives below the poverty line.
This wasn’t the highlands of Guatemala or the patchworked hillsides of Rwanda, where my work usually takes me. This was rural Kentucky—and not even Appalachia, its eastern pocket of poverty, but rather Henry County, just a 45-minute drive from Louisville. Like Appalachia, this area had long relied on an industry that drastically declined in recent decades.
