With sunny weather throughout the duration, Corbin Arena made for an ideal location to create blue-sky ideas for Eastern Kentucky.
Built in 2008, the venue is on the side of a hill. To reach it, visitors must follow a serpentine path up to its parking lot.
This week the arena has, fittingly, been serving as the epicenter of the SOAR Summit, an annual event now in its 10th year that aims to bring to light organizations, businesses and other resources in Eastern Kentucky that may otherwise go unknown by other parts of the massive 54-county region.
Out of the six innovation hubs that make up the KY Innovation system, the innovation arm of SOAR — also known as Shaping Our Appalachian Region — by far covers the most figurative ground, comprising 45% of the commonwealth’s land area.
I stopped by Corbin to get a better feel for the pulse of these eastern counties (and I'll have more from a few of the founders I’ve encountered later down the road).
One of the first of many people I spoke with on Tuesday was Jeffrey Justice, executive director of the Pine Mountain Partnership. He is based out of Whitesburg, Kentucky, in Letcher County. Justice works with more than 70 organizations and entities to help promote the economic development of the county.
“We’re really experiencing what I call the Appalachian Renaissance," he said. "Appalachia Kentucky will be totally different in 10 years than what it is today in all of the right ways. We’re making strategic investments — and when I say we, I don’t mean just the people I work with. We as a people are making investments in small businesses, nonprofit organizations and changes in the local government to really catch up with the rest of the state and the rest of the nation.”
Justice says that this renaissance started 10 years ago with the first edition of the Summit, held in Pikeville in 2013, shortly after SOAR had been established by then Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky’s fifth congressional district.
“It changed the conversation from ‘We have to save coal,’ and ‘Coal is the only future’ to ‘Coal is a part of the rest of the future,’ so now we don’t talk about coal as our economy. We talk about coal as part of our economy," Justice said.
Erik Hubbard, executive director of Backroads of Appalachia, is one of the most connected members of the Eastern Kentucky region through the work of his organization, which, among other things, helps provide occupational outlets to second-chance workers (many of whom are recovered from substance abuse).
That was not the case in 2019, when he attended his first SOAR Summit in Pikeville. He started, though, meeting what he called the “power players” of the region at the event.
“I was hat backwards and a beard guy,” Hubbard said. “I was biker and a railroader, but I had an idea and Hal Rogers actually spoke and said, ‘Without funding a dream’s a dream, not fruition,” and SOAR gave me the opportunity and the goals to figure out how to properly run a nonprofit and how to be an entrepreneur.”
Later in the afternoon, I met Ashley Gabbard, who was one of three recipients of a $500 check for a speed pitch competition. Her nonprofit is Sling Some Hope Recover Out Loud, based out of Jackson County, where Hubbard also resides.
She started the organization, which aims to provide resources for recovering from substance abuse in the county and surrounding communities, six months ago. The Summit is, in essence, a macrocosm she hopes her organization will be able to offer down the road.
“I was shocked,” Hubbard said of earning one of the checks in her first of such a competition. “Nobody but God … God did that. I didn’t do that.”
