Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) will host its fourth and final Recharge our Community Economy Workshop, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sept. 6 at the Cuyama Valley Recreation District, Montgomery Hall.

This final retreat will include the beginning implementation of a Cuyama Valley strategic plan and a presentation of three project groups that have emerged from the workshops: Town Beautification & Wayfinding; Cuyama Craftsmanship Event — Cuyama SWAP!; and Cuyama Valley Food Action Network.

RCAC believes the key to vibrant, healthy and enduring rural communities involves aspirational planning and actively creating good jobs through a viable, catalytic project.

Recharge our Community Economy is a curriculum offered through RCAC’s Building Rural Economies, an innovative program to train and support local entrepreneurs, creating positive economic change that has a lasting impact.

The program is designed to identify and carry out comprehensive community economic developmentactivities; access resources to move catalytic projects forward; train and support local entrepreneurs; and create positive economic changes that produce lasting impacts on rural communities.

Starting this fall, RCAC will enact its Start, Grow, Revive program for new and existing entrepreneurs looking to receive one-on-one technical assistance for their businesses.

Due to the capacity built through this partnership, Blue Sky Center has been able to hire a community coordinator to facilitate Blue Sky Center and RCAC activities in the arena of community economic development.

The community coordinator will provide technical assistance, training tools and resources to individual entrepreneurs in the Cuyama Valley to facilitate private sector-business development.

Blue Sky Center is a rural, place-based nonprofit organization with a mission to strengthen rural communities in the Cuyama Valley by supporting entrepreneurs and building regional creative and economic resources.

Founded in 1978, RCAC provides training, technical and financial resources and advocacy so rural communities can achieve their goals and visions. RCAC serves rural communities in 13 western states and certain Pacific islands.

Services are available to communities with populations of fewer than 50,000, other nonprofit groups, Tribal organizations, farmworkers, colonias and other specific populations. Visit www.rcac.org.

For more about the event, call Em Johnson, 661-413-3005 or email at em@blueskycenter.org.

— Em Johnson for Blue Sky Center.