Can a boutique hotel and restaurant in a former downtown department store spark an economic revival in and around St. Paul, a coalfields town located on the Clinch River in southwestern Virginia? The newly opened Western Front Hotel and Milton’s Restaurant grew from community-wide efforts begun over 15 years ago to plan the place residents […]
Sometimes rebuilding an economy, and lives, means adding one or two jobs at a time. A new bakery established by folks at the Hemphill Community Center in hard pressed coal country aims to provide Letcher County, KY residents with healthy, locally sourced breads and baked goods while supporting Drug Court participants in their journeys to […]
Three years ago, the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative won a $30 million federal grant to support innovation and personalized learning in classrooms throughout eastern Kentucky. “One of the groups that may not have benefited right away was the vocational school students,” KVEC Associate Director Dessie Bowling explained. To remedy that, in 2016 the cooperative funded […]
Many people would be surprised to hear that Bill and Melinda Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg visited eastern Kentucky schools in 2017, but they came to learn about the innovative and wholistic educational approaches implemented at 22 school districts that are members of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative. KVEC schools emphasize personalized learning, team projects, […]
