A Tamaqua area initiative is featured in the online newsletter of a national program, giving the ongoing effort broad recognition.

Dear Tamaqua, the project in which local residents are encouraged to write a letter to express thoughts about their town, is featured in the current online newsletter, dated July 17, of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. The LISC, founded 1979, is the largest community development support organization in the country.The article focuses on project and the town."A new community enrichment initiative is in motion in the former coal mining town of Tamaqua, Penna., (pop. 7,107). Known as 'Dear Tamaqua', the project is a part of the Tamaqua Safety Initiative, a program of the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership, a Rural LISC Partner CDC."Dear Tamaqua aims to chronicle Tamaqua's rich history from the viewpoint of residents, gathering together and showcasing their memories. By demonstrating how people actually feel about their community, Dear Tamaqua seeks to 'encourage community-wide pride and ownership of Tamaqua's unique identity through … original artistic creation.' Residents are encouraged to contribute via the medium of their choice, whether it be letters, video- or audio-recorded accounts, photographs, poems, visual arts, plays, short stories or original music."The article reprints a photo and other details from a Times News story about the project.Rural LISC's involvement in Tamaqua and similar activity in Uniontown, Fayette County, began in 2008.The local program is led by the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership.The LISC cites Tamaqua's situation as one of lost industry: "Tamaqua, in eastern Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region in Schuylkill County, was a thriving community throughout the heyday of coal production in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but began declining, along with many other anthracite coal mining communities, in the 1950s as the mines began tapering off," states the LISC website.Over the past six years, a total of $2,892,086 in private and public funds has been invested in Tamaqua by Rural LISC.The monies leveraged a total of $14.2 million in project development costs, including $2.5 million for housing and real estate, $25,000 for increasing family income and wealth, $92,000 to stimulate economic development, $184,000 for improving access to educational opportunities, and $57,500 to support healthy environments and lifestyles, according to the LISC website.