Each week, Xpress highlights notable WNC crowdsourcing initiatives that may inspire readers to become new faces in the crowd. This week features efforts to obtain transportation and operational funds for after-school youth programming plus a new recording project by local absurdist rockers Sirius.B.
From the Get It! Guide: Green jobs, lush community gardens, community cookouts and water quality testing — these might not be things many in Asheville picture when they think of public housing. But residents says Asheville’s public housing neighborhoods are investing in their communities’ welfare and leading a growing interest in “greening” up the neighborhoods.
How does Asheville, one of the busiest tourist hubs in the state — a place where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a chef or a farmer — have so many people lacking access to good food or outright going to bed hungry?
Working in collaboration with Housing Authority residents and the Women’s Wellbeing and Development Foundation, a group of Mars Hill University undergraduate social work students will spend a semester interviewing and filming public housing tenants before assembling their footage into a short film. The idea is to increase a sense of connection in a city where public housing communities are physically and socially isolated.
For the past three summers, Nicole Hinebaugh has led a group of children from Asheville’s public housing neighborhoods down the hiking trails of Western North Carolina. This year, she needs extra help from volunteers to keep the program — the Trailblazers Outdoor Adventure Club — going strong.
Since Xpress featured Ujamaa Freedom Market in the September Women in Business issue, project organizers have launched a campaign on crowd-funding site GoFundMe. So far, they’ve raised 20 percent of their goal.
The festival, observed nationwide, commemorates the end of slavery.
Over the last four Saturdays, the Hillcrest Resident Association partnered with the Women’s Wellbeing and Development Foundation to serve a free breakfast open to all, offering speakers and community announcements along with time for togetherness. (pictured: Angie Young and a volunteer; photos courtesy of WWDF).
Local activists met in the Laurel Forum at UNC Asheville today to encourage students to find their passions and get involved. “The cries of the people who are oppressed are loud if you’re sensitive,” said Clare Hanrahan, founder of the New South Network of War Resisters and legal adviser to the Occupy Asheville movement.
Celebrate what you’ve got and who you are. That idea frames Hillcrest residents’ Saturday, June 18, celebration of “Juneteenth” — a national event that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. First held in Texas in June 1865 as “African American Emancipation Day,” the celebration has come to emphasize education and achievement. So […]
