Situated in the impoverished Mississippi River Delta, the county has the highest poverty rate, 33 percent; one of the highest unemployment rates, 8.7 percent this fall, and the lowest homeownership rate, 56 percent.

HELENA-WEST HELENA, AR (October 19, 2006) Dr. Steven Murray, Chairman of the Delta Bridge Project Steering Committee, today announced that the Boys & Girls Club of Phillips County will receive up to $240,000 in grant funds over the next three years. The funding will be used to bring a nationally proven model for youth development to Phillips County.

Community Counseling Services, a nonprofit psychiatric center based in Hot Springs, Ark., USA needed space. Its programs were split between two cramped, old building that were expensive to maintain.

For five years, G. David Yarber rented space in Marianna for his income tax service, Pro File America Inc., but that hindered his small business’s ability to grow.

“We were just a seasonal business, about four months of the year,” said Yarber, the president and chief executive officer of the company.

The William J. Clinton Foundation had $154.8 million in the bank at the end of 2005. That’s shy by a few million of the bucks held by the Gates Foundation ($29.1 billion) or Arkansas’s home-grown Walton Foundation ($1.1 billion).

It’s sweet potato harvest time and the beginning of what many hope will become a new industry for the Arkansas Delta.

“We have probably the only strategic plan in the country that envisions the sweet potato as an agent of social change,” said Steven Murray, chancellor of Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas.

PINE BLUFF, AR -More than $1 million has been accrued in special savings accounts by low-income families across the state in their effort to improve their economic situation by building personal assets. The special matched savings accounts are called Individual Development Accounts (IDAs).

Southern Property Corporation hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for the Southern Place Apartments today. Representatives from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Rural Development, and Senator Blanche Lincoln’s office spoke at the event marking the start of the largest multi-family housing development in Phillips County in several decades.

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS -Southern Good Faith Fund’s Public Policy program today released its latest report, Helping Arkansas’ Katrina Evacuees Rebuild Their Lives. The report proposes several strategies the state of Arkansas can adopt to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the Natural State establish a stable and financially secure future.

Several organizations in the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District states are among 73 recipients of federal Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund awards.