Nantahala Health Foundation will launch its next competitive grant opportunity on July 1 with a focus on investing in educational, healthcare and workforce programs that benefit youth and young adults, ages 5 to 24. 

Stakeholders around Western North Carolina recognize the end of COVID-era child care stabilization funding and the broader lack of available child care resources as a multilayered impediment to economic development.

Through Nov. 28 agricultural employers can apply for grants through a pilot program designed to improve the resilience of the food and agricultural supply chain by addressing workforce challenges farmers and ranchers face.

As the labor shortage at Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos continues to worsen, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is considering dormitory-style employee housing that would allow it to bring in foreign workers on temporary H2B visas to support its cash cow.

As executive orders began piling up throughout March to close schools, restaurants, hotels and all other non-essential businesses, childcare facilities remained open. The essential nature of the business meant that even though it is a place where adults and children gather together in close quarters, it would have to adapt to continue its services.

People stocking shelves and working behind a register never thought they’d find themselves on the frontlines of a global pandemic to ensure the public can continue to access food and other essentials.

A new partnership between Southwestern Community College and Harris Regional Hospital aims to help aspiring nurses afford their education while bolstering Harris’ ability to maintain a quality staff. 

When a controversial text amendment passed the Town of Waynesville Planning Board and Board of Aldermen in back-to-back public hearings almost two months ago, Mayor Gavin Brown told opponents that they’d again have their chance to oppose the development that instigated it. 

Whittier has been home to Elda Chafoya DePaz and her three children for less than a year, but it’s not their first summer in Western North Carolina.

In November, it will have been 12 years since DePaz, 36, left her native Guatamala to seek a better life in the United States. Life was hard in Guatamala, she said, with poverty everywhere you looked. She worked for a banana company there, tasked with separating 17 bunches per minute from the giant clumps of fruit that come from a banana tree. The work was done manually, with just a knife.

Spring can be a scramble at the High Hampton Inn and Country Club in Cashiers. Every year, after a long and quiet winter, the business prepares to reopen its kitchens, its golf greens, its rooms and welcome back the guests as trees leaf out and the cool mountain summer begins. 

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To meet the challenge, High Hampton’s human resources manager Sydneye Trudics embarks on a rampage of hiring, in a matter of months nearly quadrupling the club’s staff from a cold-weather crew of 50 to a summer peak somewhere north of 180. It’s not an easy task.