Golden LEAF Foundation

By the way, if you're following along, that is the NEST program.

The federal award matches committed funds from the Golden Leaf Foundation and NC State investments.

The NEST program will provide a dedicated place to research, innovate, and train across the entire journey of an egg from the henhouse to the table.

table.Well, yeah, and that's, that's really a far cry from, uh, [laughs] backdoor flocks with people picking up their own eggs, isn't it?

Welcome to this edition of Critical Conversations.

I'm Scott Hamilton, the chief executive officer of The Golden Leaf Foundation.

When a company announces plans to locate or expand in a rural community, we often hear about the jobs that will be created and the investment that's gonna be made.

But that announcement is often the result of work that began long before a company chose the location.

The second box is how do we fill that piece of real estate up with productive people? And certainly there are many resources across the state, fine resources, community college program being one of them as far as how do we prepare the people that will go into that, that box and produce that product that will satisfy the need of that board of directors, right? And then, of course, third is everything else on top of it.

It's when I'm talking to rotary clubs, when I'm talking to community organizations or elected officials, it just came to me as Reginald and Robert were talking a few moments ago, this analogy is that y- I ask people what their favorite dessert is, and if they come up with chocolate chips or chocolate chip cookies I say, "What's the most important ingredient within that chocolate chip cookie?" Of course, it's always fun to say the chocolate chip, right? But the eggs and the flour and the vanilla and those other things are just as important, because if you don't have those specific ingredients or that mix, it, that cookie is not gonna taste great, and it's not gonna be an enjoyable end product.

And what we're trying to do out here with the support of the Roberts and Reginalds and the Golden Leaf Foundation and others, is that we're trying to build a community that answers the requirements that specific opportunity is looking for.

And every one of them is different, but you gotta have workforce.

So lest I cause unintended offense.

We also recently were awarded a substantial grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation, $10 million grant.

so that we can continue our ecosystem programming for the benefit of the state's entire rural community.

So there are, I should say, there are other organizations that are starting to put big commitments into this space.