Re-imagining the War on Poverty in Southeastern Ohio: The Appalachian Project

Our session will focus on how our ethnographic research seeking solutions to a sustainable educational and economic atmosphere in Appalachian Ohio reimagines the 1964 War on Poverty. President Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1964 in Ohio University in southeastern Ohio. In August 2013, Jesse Jackson asked students in a speech at the same university to support a return to federal efforts on eliminating poverty and malnutrition in the region, citing the current all-time high of 46.2 million Americans living at or below the poverty level. The Appalachian Project, Ohio, an interdisciplinary research team of faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students at Ohio State University, positions itself in relation to this call to action. For the last three years, we have conducted ethnographic research in Appalachian Ohio counties, identifying factors affecting Appalachian Ohio students’ decisions and readiness to obtain post-secondary education, understanding Appalachian Ohio students strategies for negotiating their college experiences, producing recommendations for addressing the barriers and challenges that students face, and exploring solutions to work toward creating a sustainable educational and economic atmosphere in Appalachian Ohio. Our presentation will feature a segment of our video documentary providing an overview of the data collected thus far, an explanation of our position within the rhetoric of the War on Poverty, and how it needs to be re-imagined for the current needs of the region. We will also discuss the perspectives of individual team members, including staff, graduate, and undergraduate students on patterns in the data and research process