Nurturing Thriving Communities
Mitchie Neel, Blount County Education Foundation
“I’ve had multiple funders say that they paid attention to our grant application and knew we would be reliable because they saw we had been a Community Foundation grantee. They do so much due diligence on the front end, other funders know they will be able to fund us and that we will be successful.”
Blount County Education Foundation
Schools have always served as the heart of their communities. And that has never been more true than it is now at Cleveland High School in Blount County. Thanks to a $25,000 grant from the Community Foundation, the Blount County Education Foundation has been able to convert an existing school library into a 21st century learning hub for the benefit of not only students and school staff, but the community at large.
“The whole purpose of the grant was to transform the space from a library for the students to better fit the needs of the school,” says Mitchie Neel, executive director of the Blount County Education Foundation. “In Blount County our schools are the focus of just about everybody there, whether you have people in the school or not. Community members, clubs and organizations, and the town council would want to come to the school for a meeting, and the old library just wasn’t conducive to that.” But now, the library features a conversational area for small gatherings, meeting spaces for larger groups complete with interactive, touch-screen video, a space for the school’s media team to work, and a public technology kiosk for citizens without internet access.
“We have communities in our county that have some of the worst internet reliability in the country. So when we went remote for COVID, we were essentially shutting down,” says Neel. “It doesn’t matter what your income level or background is. It makes no difference whether you can pay for it or not. None of that is an issue when it doesn’t work.”
But while internet service may still be sketchy in Blount County, the Education Foundation’s 25-year partnership with the Community Foundation has made lasting differences in the lives of its residents. “I call it the concentric circle effect,” says Neel. “There’s the child in the middle and the impact it makes on him right then. But then there’s the next year and the next year and the next year. And then there’s his family. And then there’s the family he creates as time goes on. The Community Foundation has impacted us in such a tremendous way because every little thing they do for us is like ripples in the pond. They just grow and grow and go and go.”
The mission of the Blount County Education Foundation has always been to support academic excellence in Blount County, but they realized early on that the academic issues they saw were because of opportunity gaps – things that were not available to Blount County students and their families merely because they were in Blount County. With only two public libraries serving seven communities, especially in the summer, the Blount County Education Foundation saw an opportunity to step in.
“Years ago we started adding [school] library hours in the summer, and now it’s morphed to this humongous, big, complicated moving-part thing,” says Neel. “We’re really proud of that growth and progress.”
Over the years, Neel continues, the Community Foundation has funded or helped fund summer reading and math initiatives, life skills programs, bridge programs for school credit recovery, a summer meal program for food insecure students, and transportation to and from school programs. And it’s not just the students who benefit. Much-needed jobs are created for adult residents of Blount County.
“What’s wonderful is that the Community Foundation takes the pulse of the region,” Neel says. “They have bold goals, and they’ve partnered with people from across the area to have an impact on moving our region forward.”
Neel goes on to say that one of the biggest footprints the Community Foundation has left in Blount County is a model of inclusivity not only for the schools, but for the organizations they partner with. “Everybody’s welcome. Everybody gets a seat at the table,” Neel says. “That model and that idea came from the concepts that the Community Foundation puts forth in equity and inclusion. I think they’re a role model for all of us in that area.” And more than that, Neel says that the Community Foundation has given them the tools to follow and implement that model.
“The Community Foundation has funded us at key points where we had the opportunity for growth and development. It’s been a great experience, and now, in our 25th year, we’re certainly looking back at just how far we’ve come.”