Livingston Economic Alternatives in Progress (LEAP)
Ina Taylor, Executive Director
P.O. Box 246
Livingston, Ky. 40445
(606) 453-9800

Out here on the eastern side of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, where the lush Bluegrass rises and folds into Appalachia, the land is beautiful and the living tough. Fully one-third of the county's residents live below the poverty line; the area's 10 percent unemployment rate is certainly undercounted; and it's been a long time since coal or tobacco farming provided many people here a decent living.

But a political fight a decade ago gave the people of the old railroad town of Livingston some startling ideas that, over the years, are starting to pay off.

It all began with a fight over a proposed sanitary landfill, Ina Taylor explained. Back in 1983, Livingston Fiscal Court (the county legislative body) proposed establishing a landfill on a clifftop above the town, where residents feared that unsanitary effluent might seep through the region's limestone caves and into their pure underground water supply. They banded together, fought the initiative at the county and state level, and they won.

"We got organized from this," she recalled, "and then we thought, 'Well, we can't depend on government to do for us what we need to be doing for ourselves."

So the Rockcastle River Community Land Trust was formed, sputtered for a year or two, and then, when its members realized that a land trust didn't suit the Appalachian dream of individual property ownership, it shifted its focus from land to jobs. The land trust became LEAP, it sought members from throughout the steep, wooded hills and hollows around Livingston, and its members started coming up with ways to pool their resources and their common sense.

Its first effort, the SWEET SORGHUM PROJECT, is a cooperative in which farmers grow sorghum (a traditional sweetener somewhat akin to sugar cane) and pool their produce in a cooperative processing venture, where the stalks are "stripped" and boiled down into molasses.

This project currently creates a source of income for four area farmers. More important, it provides raw material for LEAP's second major venture, the OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN PROJECT. This group of four local women, another cooperative, purchases the sorghum syrup that the Sweet Sorghum Project produces, and uses it to make a line of Kentucky specialty foods products, which range from dessert toppings to candies. With some marketing assistance from Easterm Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., these are sold under the "Golden Kentucky Products" trade name in state parks, regional gift shops, by mail-order and in the group's little roadside retail shop on State Highway 55 in the hamlet of Livingston. The cooperative's members shared $20,000 last year, and with plans to be included in a Kentucky Department of Agriculture gift catalog to be distributed in motels and tourist-welcome sites this year, they hope to boost business up to a new level.

A third activity, the LIVESTOCK PROJECT, is funded by the Heifer Project International, which provided a $20,000 grant so LEAP couple purchase more than 100 head of livestock (goats, sheep, milk cows and beef cattle) to be given to group members who can care for them. Each recipient is expected to donate the first female offspring of the gift animal back to LEAP to be given to another family; then, the recipients are free to keep the original animal as breeding stock or for wool, milk or food.

Among smaller projects aimed at helping the county's poor and building self-sufficiency, LEAP also distributes garden seeds and apple trees, and hopes to start an apple-butter co-op the year after next, when its first group of apple trees starts bearing commercially.

It also invites in scores of church volunteers every summer for a two-week work camp to sweep the county with eager workers ready to perform home repairs for any resident who needs them.

With a staff of one and a volunteer assistant, and an annual budget of less than $50,000 provided by grants from The Heifer Project, the Committee on Religion in Appalachia, the Appalachian Community Fund, and the Central Florida Presbytery (which has declared LEAP its Appalachian recipient of charitable programs), its further development is limited by Taylor's time and energy. But she'd like to see more outreach, more time to talk to local groups and get people involved ... hardware and an expert to teach computer classes to help residents gain useful skills ... and technical assistance in grant writing.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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