The Opportunity Project released 29 digital tools to help communities grow, including one, “FindYour.Town,” intended to help rural communities attract investment and spur economic growth, said the White House. The project was launched in March so non-profits, companies and other non-governmental groups could create digital tools that dig into federal databases to benefit communities.
FindYour.Town was developed by Ovela to meet a USDA-identified need to give rural communities a higher profile in the competition for investment. A White House fact sheet said that the tool “improves rural resiliency and simplifies the process of identifying funding opportunities with virtual storytelling of our rural American communities, and by providing live spatial and funding data” from USDA, the Census Bureau, the Transportation Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Roughly 15 percent of Americans live in rural America. Income levels tend to be lower and the poverty rate higher than in urban areas.