Appalachia
Background Information
It’s hard to finish school, stay employed, or make a better life for your children when each day is filled with worry about how to survive. The Christian Appalachian Project helps stop this cycle of desperation through their Grateful Bread Food Pantry, Grateful Threadz Thrift Store, Operation Sharing, and other vital services and programs that transform lives in Appalachia. Through our partnership with the locally based Christian Appalachian Project your generosity helps children, their families, and seniors become self-sufficient and build lives free from poverty and hunger. The Christian Appalachian Project’s life-changing programs and services restore hope for thousands of children and families who struggle each day to break free from poverty.
While researching facts about Appalachia, we found this accurate description of the people who live in the Appalachian Mountains.
What do Appalachian people value?
Loyal Jones described the characteristic value traits in more becoming terms: "Religion, Individualism, Self-Reliance and Pride, Neighborliness and Hospitality, Family Solidarity, Personalism, Love of Place, Modesty and Being One's Self, Sense of Beauty, Sense of Humor, Patriotism" (Jones1991:170).
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Personal Note about Appalachia from Maureen Shanley:
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I was on the Board for the Appalachian Volunteers, Inc. for many years. The underlying focus of this group was to support crafts that were being made in homes and in co-ops in the Appalachian Mountains. These crafts are a part of our American culture and we wanted to support these artisans so that they could continue to teach others and thus pass on their unique skills and knowledge about their crafts that all so often is not be found in books.
Our mission was to support in a financial way these unique American crafters by giving them an additional monetary source that enabled some of to continue to live in their mountain homes which they so loved. The income earned by selling their crafts to us certainly meant that the additional source of income helped the family budget that was always stretched thin. I had the opportunity to travel to the mountains to visit our crafters. Being able to enter people’s homes, sit down and share a meal and have conversations meant that many became my friends.
Our annual festival called Experience Appalachia at Fairfield University, in Fairfield, CT was unique because we brought the actual crafters to Fairfield so that they could show New Englanders how they created their crafts. Many supporters of Appalachian Volunteers, Inc. graciously opened their homes to our artists feeding them and giving them a bed to sleep in so that whatever profit they made at the festival would leave with them when they returned to their mountain homes. However, this was more than just a crafts festival because we also sponsored musicians, dancers, and storytellers who entertained our craft fair attendees. This was our way of sharing and spreading the joy that we found in the unique cultures that still exist in the Appalachia Mountains.
The best part of being an Appalachian Volunteer was getting to meet and become friends with the wonderful people who created these traditional American crafts. One summer I had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks traveling all through the Appalachian Mountains visiting our crafters. My objective was to take photographs and then write articles so that people in the Fairfield/Bridgeport area would be able to “get to know” our artists on a more personal level before they came to our Experience Appalachia Festival. Of course, as I traveled I was invited into people’s homes, which was truly the most special part of this trip. Working with our crafters on a personal level brought such joy into my life because I was able to host crafters, now my friends, when they came to CT for our annual crafts festival. It was an honor to be able to welcome them into my home, just as they had opened their homes to me. Also, during a couple of spring vacations, I was able to accompany the main buyer for our store, Appalachian House, which was located in Darien, CT. We would spend the week searching out local stores where we would buy crafts, and if possible we would get the names and contact information of the crafters. We always paid whatever the crafters decided was the correct/fair price for their work. Then we would decide what we could charge for each item. As an NGO that only had one paid worker, our overhead was low. For many years we were able to help some families earn a bit of extra income to help their families.
Our store no longer exists, but I am happy to say that many states in the Appalachian Mountains have finally built centers/stores where the label MADE IN AMERICA is true! However, if you would like to support artists & crafters in Appalachia HERE are links to sites where you can BUY ART MADE IN AMERICA!!! Some of these sites will also invite you to visit so that they share their knowledge & skills at their Appalachian craft/cultural seminars.