Smart bets: Balsam Range

Balsam Range “thoughtfully and respectfully adopted the name of a majestic range of mountains” near the band’s hometown in Haywood County, but the bluegrass ensemble’s reverence for Western North Carolina doesn’t end there. The five-piece will hold a benefit concert for the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry’s Veterans Restoration Services, an organization providing housing, food […]

Sex discrimina­tion complaint filed against ABCCM

Based on claims that the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM) failed to provide female veterans with the same job training classes as their male counterparts, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a sex-discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor against ABCCM. The complaint was filed today on behalf of U.S. Army veteran Emily Bagby. (photo of Emily Bagby by Adam Taylor)

Executive director of ABCCM to speak in D.C. about local success with helping homeless veterans

Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry executive director, Reverend Scott Rogers, will speak before the Senate sub-committee on Veterans Affairs today at 10 a.m. alongside the national coalition of homeless veterans, to share their principles and practices that are producing local outcomes above the national average.

Males, war and PTSD

Our VOINCAs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, another threat is growing here at home. And though it’s invisible, it has the same potential to spawn abuse, maiming and death. This threat targets the families and loved ones of untreated or poorly treated soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and other emotional conditions […]

Hard times come again

It is, perhaps, a sign of the times: “People are asking us for food more than money or anything else,” says Amy Sawyer, coordinator of Asheville’s Homeless Initiative. “We’re seeing more families, more children, less of the habitually homeless. Some of them still have jobs, and things were tight before, but now they can’t pay […]