41 Storytelling and sustained community engagement are central to the organization’s approach. Central to RiverWise’s team are a professional documentarian and a journalist who capture and circulate resident stories. The goal is to “counteract the notion that Beaver County’s best days are behind it, seeding a sense of hope and possibility… and to organize community voice and community power so that residents can exercise agency over the places they call home.” The communities in Beaver County are a lot more complex than this singular narrative of decline depicts. RiverWise works to restore agency to residents in order to surface a fuller, more composite picture of the people and places that make up the region. As a result, storytelling becomes both a cultural and social benefit as well as a catalyst for increased investment and change. As Daniel explains, “This is a robust engagement with the economic and social future of our communities, and what we’re trying to accomplish, if organized well and resourced well, can be a driver of not only identity, and not only quality of life, but also economy, infrastructure, [and] resilience.” They “create the narrative conditions necessary for residents to come alive to a possible future, and at the same time, help them create that future.” In the years since its founding, RiverWise has helped to generate tangible economic and social impact across Beaver County. Along the many communities that line the region’s waterways, RiverWise has catalyzed both economic opportunity and community resilience. Over the past decade, and in close partnership with Pittsburgh based nonprofit New Sun Rising, the organizations have together incubated roughly $30 million in community projects. Central to the development of such projects is the Justice 40 Opportunity Navigator (J40N), which was created in partnership with New Sun Rising. The program was initially created to help federally designated Environmental Justice communities in Beaver and Allegheny Counties access Justice 40 funding - a Biden era commitment to direct 40% of the benefit of federal infrastructure and climate investments to historically disadvantaged communities. This designation was an important opening for Beaver County communities that carry the compounded legacy of industrial pollution and decades of economic disinvestment. Subsequently renamed the Sustainable Futures Initiative, this program walks community organizations through the entire process, from educational workshops that help residents identify and shape project Small City Natural Environment • Feature • RiverWise
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