Humanitarian Fund Will Increase Little Rock Presence.

WINROCK INTERNATIONAL, the global humanitarian nonprofit based at Morrilton, plans to establish Little Rock headquarters in the near future, though no location or date had been selected, officials said last week.

About 80 people will move to the new headquarters, said communications director Mary Laurie. About 20 people will continue to operate a conference facility on Petit Jean Mountain, where New York-born billionaire Winthrop Rockefeller established a home 48 years ago in his adopted state.

A board meeting later this month may decide the location and type of facility to be occupied in Little Rock, Laurie said.

The $76 million organization currently runs other offices in Arlington, Va., along with operational centers in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet Union.

Winrock has only six employees in Little Rock now, said Gregg Patterson, director of U.S. programs, the single Winrock division now located in the city.

Patterson, 43, came to Winrock this year after a career spent in state government at the Game and Fish Commission and the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology (now the Department of Environmental Quality).

In 1999, the latest year for which complete figures are available, Winrock International spent $45.8 million worldwide, on revenue of $49.4 million, only about 2 percent of which was directed to programs in the United States, Patterson said.

Among the projects he oversees are an apprenticeship program with the Arkansas Wood Manufacturers Association and a partnership between utility companies and Delta farmers that ultimately aims to rebuild the great bottomland hardwood forests of the Mississippi Valley.

"To have a strong economy, you've got to have strong environmental and natural resource management," Patterson said last week, and the two Arkansas projects emphasize Winrock's commitment to the philosophy.

The Wood Manufacturers apprenticeship aims to increase rural employment in skilled trades. Specifically, members of the AWMA, mostly small businesses involved in making specialized wood products, need skilled workers to operate technologically complex machinery, Patterson said.

"A lot of the machinery that is needed was basically being operated by folks in their late 40s and early 50s," he said. "There was literally a generation of workers out there that was being missed. We worked closely with them in developing an apprenticeship program."

AWMA designed the training, which includes summer employment for high school students. The U.S. Department of Labor recently endorsed the program.

Pollution Partnership

East Arkansas farmers form an unlikely alliance with large utility companies in the Landowner Carbon Sequestration Project. Designed to convert about 11,500 acres of treeless former soybean fields back to their original hardwood bottomland forest state, the program enables farmers to increase profits and helps utilities meet pollution control requirements economically.

Simply put, "it's a tree-planting program," Patterson said.

Utility companies are among the nation's heaviest polluters through electrical generation plants. By planting trees, Patterson said, the companies can offset some of the pollutants they discharge into the air, since trees absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Winrock International facilitates partnerships between utilities looking for carbon "offsets" and farmers with unproductive farmland, usually formerly planted in soybeans.

The farmer sells a permanent easement to the land, while supplementing the farm income by leasing hunting rights and, possibly, harvesting timber at a sustainable rate. Eventually, the land may revert to its natural wetland state, decreasing sedimentation.

"It's good P.R. for the utility companies," Patterson said.

"One of the things that we always try to do is think of and develop alternative revenue sources," Patterson said.

The foundation was formed in 1985 from the merger of three philanthropic agricultural organizations.

Rockefeller, brother to former vice president and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, moved to Arkansas in 1953. He served as head of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission under former Gov. Orval Faubus. In 1966, Rockefeller became the first Republican to be elected governor since Reconstruction, defeating segregationist Democrat Jim Johnson. Rockefeller was re-elected in 1968 before losing to Democrat Dale Bumpers in 1970. He died in 1973, leaving Winrock International as a part of his legacy to the state.

The Winrock board includes Lt. Gov. Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, the former governor's son.