Editorial collage connecting rural Louisiana, infrastructure, community governance, and maps

ERC Fellowship Capstone

From Moving At The Speed of Trust to Proceeding As The Way Opens

Capacity Building Through Suburban-Rural Regional Coordination

Economic Recovery Corps Fellow: Deeneaus Polk serving St. Helena and Washington Parishes

A national fellowship grounded in two Louisiana parishes.

The Economic Recovery Corps is a national fellowship supported by the International Economic Development Council and the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Deeneaus Polk was placed with St. Tammany Economic Development Corporation to serve and work alongside leaders in St. Helena and Washington Parishes.

Moving at the Speed of Trust

“Instinct caused me to reiterate the need to move at the speed of trust and this month definitely helped me understand why.”

June 2024 Project Description

Proceeding as the Way Opens

“Now, I am focused on proceeding as the way opens, leaning into these [newly] formed relationships and leveraging them to create traction ... and overall impact for the communities I serve as well.”

August 2024 Project Description

The Roadmap Before the Results

Before these outcomes were visible, the roadmap already connected local economic development institutions with community planning and leadership, HBCU technical assistance, and the buildout of infrastructure and the digital ecosystem.

View full size Download workbook

Deeneaus Polk's July 2025 ERC Roadmap with planned workstreams and timing through July 2026

Original roadmap · completed July 12, 2025

Reading the roadmap correctly: the workbook’s colors and x marks show planned timing, not completion. A formal CLED Redux and rural ETA remain visible as directions, but were not carried forward as projects to be completed.

Digital infrastructure

Building and Designing Websites For Public Institutions.

Two distinct community institutions now have public platforms built around their own audiences, priorities, and identities.

Homepage of the St. Helena Economic Development Foundation website

St. Helena Parish

SHED Economic Development Foundation

shedf.org

Washington Parish

Watermelon Festival

wpwatermelonfestival.org

Added technical capacity

Analy Vega and Mekyla Basconcillo turned community questions into usable digital work.

Internships supported by

Analy Vega

Incoming Freshman, Harvard University

Contributed ArcGIS mapping that documented businesses and industry across St. Helena Parish, then used Community Competitiveness Indicator data to make the map relevant to SHED Board needs.

Mekyla Basconcillo

Junior, Graphic Design, Woodbury University

Designed the early concepts for both the SHED and Washington Parish Watermelon Festival websites, working with local communities to shape what they wanted each site to communicate and how it should look.

Washington closes through local stewardship.

Washington Parish

WPEDFFastSitesRegional tiesFestival site

St. Helena becomes the continued learning field case.

St. Helena Parish

SHEDCBAIDBFirst PILOT

Solar panels above growing plants, as pictured in Doing Energy Differently on IEDC.

IEDC · January 26, 2026

Doing Energy Differently: Rural Voices in Louisiana’s Clean Energy Transition

By Deeneaus Polk

How rural Louisiana communities can shape clean energy investment through trust, local negotiating capacity, and regional partnerships, with residents’ priorities guiding what comes next.

Read the article on IEDC

Facilitating Community Driven Outcomes

Internships, planning resources, and youth programs grew from connections between local priorities and partners able to support them.

Tri-Parish STEAM Initiative

In December 2025, a proposal connected Southern University, K-12 education partners, and 3 participating parishes together to put in a STEAM proposal. RWE agreed to support the clean energy and STEAM pathway initiative and the first award followed in August 2026, with additional support to come in the future.

Cover of the Tri-Parish Clean Energy and STEAM presentation

December 2025 project designOpen the seven-slide proposal

The deck requested $20,000 in Year 1 anchor funding and outlined a three year path from dual enrollment and industry credentials to educator development. Funding is now structured as $10,000 per year for two years, totaling $20,000 overall.

Role and ownership: The proposal identifies Deeneaus Polk and ERC as connecting workforce development with regional economic growth opportunities. Southern University and the participating education and community institutions lead program delivery.

Read the St. Helena project record

Funding and local ownership

Source + amountLocal ownerFellowship contribution

$12,000Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Parish partners working through co-designed internship scopes

Secured access to internship support and coordinated scopes around locally identified web and data needs.

$10,000DEMCO → Muse 3 Farms

Muse 3 Farms

Supported coordination of the opportunity.

$80,000Delta Regional Authority

St. Helena Parish partners

Connected local planning priorities to regional resources and supported coordination around the opportunity.

$10,000 per yearRWE Clean Energy

Southern University Ag Center · Tri-Parish STEAM Initiative

Connected workforce development to the regional economic growth opportunity in the partnership proposal. Support is structured across two years, totaling $20,000.

$5,000RWE Clean Energy

St. Helena Parish Summer Camp

Volunteered with the Parish’s summer camp, which also received support from RWE.

The regional context lives on the map.

The Delta Clean Energy & Digital Infrastructure Map connects the parish work to the larger geography of investment, power, land, rurality, and community-benefit questions across the region.

Open the map in a new window

Live research platform

Preview captured August 31, 2026

Preview of the Delta Clean Energy and Digital Infrastructure Map showing project clusters across the South

Explore the live interactive map

Projects

Reported investment in clean energy and hyperscale data centers in the DRA footprint.

Infrastructure

Digital infrastructure investments and the electric transmission, gas pipelines, and interconnection queue that go with them.

Place

DRA footprint, Black population, rurality, and global horizontal irradiance, which often serves as a proxy for project location.

Governance

Community benefit research that is contextualized and driven by local community involvement.

The map is 3LEVATE research infrastructure influenced by Deeneaus Polk’s time as an ERC Fellow. It supports comparison and planning for communities within the DRA 8-state, 255 Parish/County footprint, but should not be confused with the two community website transfers.

A Deeper Look Into The Work

The Journey closes Year 1. The Reset sets the direction for Year 2 and the rest of the Fellowship.

End of Year 1Year 2 and the Fellowship ahead

A reflection on the first year

The Journey

The Journey marked the end of Year 1, taking stock of the relationships, local priorities, and lessons that changed the direction of the work in each Parish.

“When I was selected as an ERC Fellow, I was most excited at the prospect of pursuing a big dream: bringing Communities of Color together across our state lines to better collaborate, share information, and support one another as we navigate the major shifts coming to our communities.”

How that direction influenced the work

St. Helena Parish

Repeated meetings and Parish visits established relationships that shaped the work and led to deeper working relationships with Parish government. This allowed me to deepen the solar work, host a business summit with Mrs. Virginia, and take in my first industrial business expansion.

Washington Parish

Working with the Economic Development Foundation to build out the candidate profile and search for their Executive Director, the economic summit put on by Representative John Wyble, and peer learning from Maine helped drive the work.

SHED + Pointe Coupee + CPEX

Local trust led to an invitation to learn from the peer Parish of Pointe Coupee, with discussions leading to analysis of a potential PILOT in St. Helena. This meeting truly opened the solar and community benefit conversations in the Parish, with Mrs. Virginia leading the way.

Read the Year 1 reflection

The plan at the halfway mark

The Reset

At the halfway mark, The Reset organized the plan for Year 2 and the remainder of the Fellowship, connecting first-year learning to the work still ahead.

“My overall fellowship is emerging as a story about challenging the traditional notions of Economic Development in the Deep South. For far too long, communities in this region have depended on external entities to drive their growth and prosperity.”

How that direction influenced the work

Communities negotiating their future

St. Helena’s community-benefit work, IDB, and PILOT pathway put local priorities into the investment conversation.

Institutions with tools of their own

The websites give local institutions a public home. ArcGIS mapping will make business and industry data more useful to the SHED Board.

Regional partners working on local priorities

The Southern University partnership with Tri-Parish STEAM provides continued practical implementation for the broader priorities of the community vision.

Read the Year 2 plan

ERC Year 1 Update

What’s next?

Editorial collage connecting HBCUs, applied research, local firms, workforce, infrastructure, and rural governance

One connected Framework and Praxis that creates syncopation.

In Pursuit of Syncopation: Developing a Development Ready Community. Deeneaus Polk’s poster connects work in St. Helena and Washington Parishes with regional readiness, local leadership, an Industrial Development Board, community benefits, and future partnerships. — View poster full size

Regional Production Model

Deep South Mittelstand

Leaning into the German model to grow place-based firms alongside the governance frameworks needed to promote better workforce, capital, and research outcomes that build enduring economic systems, transfer wealth, and promote collective benefit.

Knowledge Mechanism

HBCU Innovation Model

Turn community driven policy development challenges into student and faculty projects that are compensated and produce usable decisions and implementation capacity.

Live Demonstration

Project St. Helena

Test how a rural community can navigate governing the potential of major clean-energy investment in their community, growing their economy while retaining local authority.