West Virginia’s reliance on federal funds to help address deeply ingrained issues makes it particularly vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s freeze on spending on federal loans and grants.
Federally funded programs provide social safety nets and employment in one of the nation’s poorest, most rural states, where nonprofits play a vital role in providing basic services like healthcare, education and economic development.
Coalfield Development helped leverage almost $700 million for projects tied to Biden administration spending packages—funding 1,000 jobs in West Virginia alone.
Part of the nonprofit’s role is to recruit and train the local workforce for the projects—something personal for CEO Jacob Hannah, who comes from three generations of coal miners and saw his father laid off from the mines.
Hannah toured a former coal train refurbishment factory slated to become a manufacturing hub and business incubation space where workers should have been busy with rewiring, brick and roof repair.
“So we took it on as a nonprofit to revitalize it for the community around us,” said Hannah. “We’ll use workforce development to do that. We train folks to have careers in construction so we want the space to have a new vibrancy inside it.”
Hannah’s projects are now on pause indefinitely. Hannah said his organization received communications that their awards are “under review” with limited details.
Alecia Allen runs a therapy practice and grocery store in a low-income neighborhood in West Virginia’s capital called Keep Your Faith Corporation.
She wasn’t getting answers from federal agencies about the grants that help her work with farmers to provide local, healthy food to her community at a lower cost. Then a vendor she buys from to stock store shelves told her that her weekly bill was going up from $500 to $850 because of tariffs.
“Our scope of work is not political,” said Allen. “We just want to move the health of the state forward and we don’t want that to be impacted by what’s happening at the political level.”
This article and video were provided by The Associated Press.
[Jacob Hannah walking into a former coal train factory]
[Ashley Cain and Jacob Hannah of Coalfield Development walking through a former factory]
Jacob Hannah (interview): “So we’re standing in an old factory that used to be a brownfield site. Has a great history. Used to refurbish coal trains, had planes and jeeps of World War II manufactured here and it’s been empty as you can see for many decades since. And so we took it on as a nonprofit to revitalize it for the community around us. We’ll use workforce development to do that. We train folks to have careers in construction so we want the space to have a new vibrancy inside it.”
[Jacob Hannah walking through worksite]
Jacob Hannah (interview): “And today would normally it would be uh bustling with a lot of activity for renovation and construction. Unfortunately all that is on pause uh because of the grants pause. So this is uh a very heavily grants dependent project because it has so many challenges and barriers that normal market drivers wouldn’t tackle a big old factory like this.”
[Ashley Cain talking to Jacob Hannah inside former factory]
Jacob Hannah (interview): “We’re having to just sort of see what happens. Hold our breath and pray and hope that grants don’t just disappear. Because again we’ve committed this to the community. We have all the projects ready. We have the supplies ready. We have the contracts ready. And this will be blue collar manufacturing jobs for this community that has been left behind.”
[Jacob Hannah talking to Ashley Cain inside former factory]
[Alecia Allen taking a photo with a kid inside her grocery store]
Alecia Allen (interview): “So we’ve seen a lot of fear among the staff. Are they gonna be able to sustain themselves? Are they gonna be able to cope with the stress that they are having in their own individual world and able to perform well in the workplace? And then again are we going to be able to continue in care with the consumers that we’ve been with since we’ve been in practice?”
[Staff member making a sandwich]
[Staff member at the cash register]
Alecia Allen (interview): “Keep Your Faith Corporation opened because we’re the only existing group therapy practice that is black owned and operated. So when I say that I mean that our executive director, supervising clinicians and all the way down to our interns identify with some special population. And so they create cultural representations around the consumers that are a part of our target population.”
[Alecia Allen walking through her clinic]
Alecia Allen (interview): “Our scope of work is is not political. We care about the consumers that are benefiting from healthcare services and access to healthy food. We just want West Virginians to be able to eat when they’re hungry and get the care they need so they are able to perform well at home, at school, at work and just interact in a positive way with one another. We just want to move the health of the state forward and we don’t want that to be impacted by what’s happening at the political level.”
[Staff member putting away food]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.