More than $450,000 in grants has been awarded to support initiatives from child care and housing to workforce attraction in rural Iowa, the governor’s office announced Thursday. Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg said in a news release that the grants will allow projects to move forward to create opportunity throughout the state. A total of 25 individual projects were awarded grants under the different funding opportunities in the program, including Rural Innovation Grants, Rural Scale-Up Grants, Rural Enrichment Grants, Rural Housing Assessment Grants, Rural Childcare Market Study Grants, and Rural Leadership Bootcamp Grants. A couple of examples include the IGNITE Pathways program in Woodbine, which will use funding to create an automotive maintenance training program to address a lack of options in the area, and Iowa Central Community College, which will create a new regional career academy center in Storm Lake to improve access to high-quality technical education and close opportunity gaps that exist in the region.