Appalachian Volunteers
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| Founded | 1964 |
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| Focus | Community organization |
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Area served
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Central Appalachia |
| Method | Organizing, community development |
Appalachian Volunteers (AV) was a non-profit organization engaged in community development projects in central Appalachia that evolved into a controversial community organizing network, with a reputation that went "from self-help to sedition" as its staff developed from "reformers to radicals," in the words of one historian, in the brief period between 1964 and 1970 during the War on Poverty.
The Appalachian Volunteers (AV) began as an activity of the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM), which had been headquartered in Berea, Kentucky, since 1925. Following President Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union message of January 8, 1964, in which he announced his War on Poverty, CSM staff member Milton Ogle organized a group of students from Berea College to help repair a one-room school in Harlan County, Kentucky. During the following two months, students from other eastern Kentucky colleges were involved in similar weekend projects. A meeting was held at the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County to formally organize the Appalachian Volunteers to expand such efforts. Representatives of the Kentucky Governor's office, the President's Appalachian Regional Commission, and the President's Committee for a War on Poverty were present to encourage college and school officials and to promise federal support. A $50,000 grant from the federal Area Redevelopment Administration to the CSM was arranged in March 1964 to fund AV activities during the rest of the year.
During 1964 the AV continued to expand the number of colleges involved in school renovation, cultural enrichment, and recreation programs for children in one and two room schools. A prototype summer project was tested by an AV staff member and three students, who spent eight weeks in Clay County, Kentucky, providing recreation and remedial work for the children in a remote hollow. A "Books for Appalachia" campaign, which collected over a million volumes, was begun in cooperation with the National Parent-Teacher Association.
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