The Duke Endowment's Program for the Rural Carolinas is a 5-year effort to assist the revitalization of rural communities. Guiding principles of the program are that the rural Carolinas matter, this generation of workers matters, effective community development involves the entire community, solutions must be locally determined, healthy communities focus on their assets, and change takes time. The first goal of the program is to increase employment, income, and wealth for people left behind by the economy. This is accomplished by thinking strategically, looking inward as well as outward for job creation opportunities, identifying competitive advantages, increasing access to jobs, and developing the existing workforce by making it easier to get more education and training and using federal funds to retrain workers. Communities need to be educated in financial savvy, and financial and civic infrastructures need to be strengthened. The second goal is building leadership, assets, and structures that support long-term economic renewal. Accomplishing this starts with building cadres of leaders that create a participatory structure to foster dialog, build shared understandings of civic priorities, and build trust across disparate sectors of the community. These teams must cultivate the support of policymakers, average citizens, and those affected by proposed changes. Assets inside and outside the community must be developed, and structures that support long-term economic renewal must be strengthened and developed. An appendix presents background and logistics of the program. (TD)