Emily Neville
Emily Neville
“I can’t wait to get out,” was a common expression at my high school in Harnett County, a rural county that sits between Raleigh and Fayetteville. In fact, it is something I used to say as I hoped to leave behind my small-town roots for a larger, more sophisticated city.
I’m not sure of the moment my perception changed, but sometime between finishing my junior year and entering my senior year, I realized the respect I had for the people in my hometown and the county at large. As I started to travel and see more of the world, nothing was more comforting than coming home to my family farm and settling into my familiar southern accent that is sure to come out around family and childhood friends.
The “must get out” mentality held by many millennials today is damaging to rural areas. I do not come home very often, but I do work for my hometown’s representative, rules chairman David Lewis in the General Assembly, and I drive down to Harnett County for meetings with the leadership academy I started in high school.
The reason I still care is simple; while Raleigh and Wake County at large have innumerable service organizations and nonprofits, Harnett County and other rural areas lack basic resources for their students. If the schools are overcrowded and cannot even afford textbooks, a problem I had in my own high school, how will their students compare to those in wealthier counties like Wake, who are able to provide their students with extra foreign language courses, a slew of AP classes, and more?
The issue of a lack of resources is not limited to the school system. While Wake has seven Boys & Girls Clubs, Harnett County has none. The list goes on, but my focus is not the disparities that do exist, but what can be done to change them.
This applies to an extraordinary number of students at NC State. Eighty-seven percent of undergraduate students at NC State in fall 2015 called North Carolina home. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions strives to represent the entire state in their decisions, and it shows by the number accepted from each county, nearly 50 percent admitted from each one.
I spoke to Kittrane Sanders, Harnett County Cooperative Extension Agent, an agency started by NC State in all 100 North Carolina counties to promote growth and partnership. Sanders said,“If everyone continues to move out, the community will not thrive. We have to have young people willing to not simply chase the dollar, that understand they are needed and want to give back to their community.” Sanders herself is a native of Harnett County and attended Shaw University in Raleigh. She told me she had “an opportunity to leave but chose not to.”
At least part of the reason why young people move away is not out of desire, but out of necessity. After all, it’s easier to make money where there are jobs for your degree or a transportation system. Sanders told me that is why she is focusing on entrepreneurship. “Once you give individuals the skills and invest in them, they are able to thrive. We are focusing on entrepreneurship initiatives with our current youth to encourage them to understand the issues and start businesses.”
The jobs might not be there when you first look, but there are so many businesses, especially those with nonprofit arms, needed in rural areas that could be supported by the community. It just takes someone with the skills and resources willing to start it.
Whether you are from a rural area in North Carolina or another state, or maybe even another country, there is something to be said about taking pride in your roots and giving back to your community. Maybe you are from an urban area and can take this same mentality to give back to the city that shaped you to be the person you are today. NC State is giving us the tools and resources we need, the question is, what will we do with it?