Honorees Yinka Bode-George, Scott Hamilton, and Mark Trahant demonstrate how local voices can lead decisions about energy, land, and development in the places they call home.

DECATUR, AL / ACCESS Newswire / November 5, 2026 / Tonight, at the opening of the 2026 Rural Renaissance Roadshow, Groundswell honored three leaders who help rural communities, small towns, and tribal nations shape their own futures and make sure local people have a real say in decisions about investment, energy, and development.

This year’s Rural Power Awardees are:

  • Yinka Bode-George, founder, president, and CEO of Sustain Our Future Foundation in Washington, D.C., builds community benefit strategies that put residents in charge of how large energy projects give back. Bode-George is honored for showing that when residents set the priorities, community benefits become a tool for self-determination.
  • Scott Hamilton, president and CEO of the Urban League of the State of Arkansas in Little Rock, connects Arkansans to opportunity in health, education, jobs, and housing. Hamilton is honored for insisting that the people most affected – especially underserved communities – have a real voice in decisions about jobs, land, water, and affordability.
  • Mark Trahant, a citizen of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes based in Phoenix, Arizona, has spent five decades telling the stories of Indian Country. Trahant is honored for his journalism that keeps tribal sovereignty and Native voices at the center of conversations about land, energy, and the future.

Groundswell CEO Michelle Moore welcomed neighbors from across the region to Decatur and opened the evening by centering the people behind the work. The awardees, she said, are a reminder that progress is about more than infrastructure or investment. “Progress is measured by the opportunities we create, the voices we elevate, and the communities we strengthen,” Moore said.

Communities first at the data center crossroads

During a Q&A session with the honorees, speakers explored how residents can take an active role as major projects – including data centers and renewable energy developments – are proposed in their communities. They agreed that local people need timely information, trusted relationships, and the resources to weigh proposals and set their own priorities.

Bode-George shared how residents of Grant County, West Virginia shaped the community benefits tied to a wind farm repowering project. Rather than starting with a debate about clean energy, the effort began with listening to what residents said mattered most: workforce development, housing resilience, and student education. A community advisory board decided how benefit funding would be used. “It’s really a conversation about self-determination and a conversation about how to actualize your self-determined goal,” Bode-George said.

Trahant spoke about tribal sovereignty, place, and community action across generations. “Making sure that we have systems in place that protect salmon for my grandchildren’s generations and their grandchildren’s generations, so that they’re always with us-that, to me, is also a form of sovereignty,” he said.

In remarks read by Matthew Wesley Williams on behalf of Scott Hamilton, Hamilton shared, “I believe everyone deserves a fair opportunity to shape their own destiny.” He added that decisions at the data center crossroads should weigh the effects on “jobs, land, water, and affordability,” with local voices helping shape the outcome, and urged neighbors and decisionmakers alike to “engage early, ask questions, and work together.”

Speakers also called on companies to come prepared to listen: to recognize local strengths and to reckon with histories of broken promises and environmental harm. Community participation, they said, should go beyond benefit funds to include a meaningful role in setting project standards and evaluating proposals.

Across the evening, the honorees’ message was clear: the people who live in a place should have the information, capacity, and influence to shape what happens there.

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ABOUT THE RURAL POWER AWARDS

The Rural Power Awards honor leaders who advance community self-determination through storytelling, organizing, connection, and support for locally defined visions of the future.

ABOUT THE RURAL RENAISSANCE ROADSHOW

The 2026 Rural Renaissance Roadshow, At the Data Center Crossroads: Land, Energy, Water, & The Future of Rural Power, takes place November 4-6, 2026, at the Cook Museum of Natural Science in Decatur, Alabama. More details are available at www.RuralRenaissance.com.

ABOUT GROUNDSWELL

Groundswell lowers energy bills and strengthens resilience for our neighbors across rural, small-town, and urban America. We build community solar, and resilience hubs that provide both everyday stability and emergency readiness. We deliver the repairs and efficiency upgrades that make homes healthier and safer, more affordable, and an asset they can pass on. Since 2009, we have built community power-aligning people, trust, and investment. With joy. And we measure every result so we can reach the next family. The last mile is our first mile.

Contact Information

Kenrick Escalanti
kenrick.escalanti@groundswell.org
(928) 304-0650

SOURCE: Groundswell

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