A process of determining how to spend a Community Assistance Initiative grant of up to $2 million from the Golden LEAF Foundation for Wilkes County starts with a meeting on Tuesday.

Andrew Guinn, a researcher from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government, will meet with local government, business, health, human service and education leaders and representatives of other segments of the community in a meeting in the commissioners’ room of the Wilkes County Office Building in Wilkesboro at 2 p.m. Aug. 28.

Guinn will gather information for a report on demographic, governance, education and health care trends in Wilkes County, as well as economic development challenges and opportunities.

Guinn said he is working with a team of researchers in the School of Government’s Community and Economic Development program to create a report for the Golden LEAF Foundation as part of the Community Assistance Initiative process.

Dan Gerlach, president of the Golden LEAF Foundation, announced Wilkes county’s participation in the process during a meeting last month at the Wilkes County Office building.

"This will be a nine-month to yearlong evolving process,” said Gary Blevins, chairman of the Wilkes County commissioners. "It will be a very public process. The amount of money the county receives will be dependent on which projects are approved.”

Forty counties have already been approved for funding from the foundation, said Blevins.

Although the series of community meetings designed to identify priorities and how to address them with a Community Assistance Initiative grant will be held this year, the money will not necessarily be awarded this year, said Patricia Cabe, Golden Leaf vice president of programs for community assistance.

"We typically contact the county manager first to get names and get people together” to start the process in a county. The foundation’s priorities revolve around economic development, including workforce training and making transitions. Agriculture is always a priority,” said Ms. Cabe.

Efforts approved for Community Assistance Initiative grants vary significantly in different counties.

In 2009, Surry County was awarded a $2.06 million Community Assistance Initiative grant to extend water and sewer lines just east of Elkin and elsewhere and to renovate buildings in Pilot Mountain and Elkin for use as Surry Community College satellite campuses.

The Golden LEAF Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 1999 to help transform North Carolina’s economy. It gets half of North Carolina funds from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with cigarette manufacturers and places special emphasis on assisting tobacco-dependent, economically distresses and/or rural communities across the state.