Two small rural LDD’s located in Northern Appalachia were successful in obtaining a $4.5 million grant from ARC’s ARISE program to provide new and innovative workforce initiatives as a two state partnership. The Twin Tiers ARISE program (TTAP) consist of a total of 8 counties that fall on the southern tier of New York and northern tier of Pennsylvania. Southern Tier Central Regional Planning & Development Board (STC) and Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission (NT) began working on this partnership to address regional workforce issues during COVID, but the ARISE money provided the funding necessary to pull together the region’s additional 4 partners and to devise a workforce strategy to address the declining youth workforce participation rates and to capitalize on the region’s commutation patterns.