HISTORY OF ASP

 ABOUT
​CENTRAL APPALACHIA
The 2018 Appalachia Trip (through Appalachia Service Project, Inc.) is a mission trip sponsored by Friends of Appalachia Inc. Friends of Appalachia, Inc. (FOA) is a Trumbull, Connecticut based 501c3 Community Organization, open to all, which strives to educate and sensitize youth and adult volunteers to address the needs of the impoverished people in Central Appalachia.

ASP was originally a program of the United Methodist church. Now, an independent, non-profit corporation. It is a christian ministry open to all participants and denomination. ASP encourages teens to understand their home repair work as “Faith in Action”. In their words: “ASP provides vital housing services to low-income families living in Central Appalachia as well as transformation life experienced to those we serve, volunteers offering their service, congregations involved with ASP, and entire communities.”

ASP runs its Summer Program for either weeks each summer, at work centers throughout Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina,  Virginia and West Virginia. Teens come from all over the country to do their week of work. The work the teens do basic home repair. To learn more about ASP, visit their website at www.asphome.org

The Gospel of acceptance, love and sacrificial giving is needed by all..."As you do it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me." This Gospel of Jesus, of acceptance, love and sacrificial giving is needed by all. As we experience this Gospel, we seek to share it with others. 

Out of this desire to share, Glenn "Tex" Evans became concerned with the people of Appalachia. As a United Methodist minister serving people through the Henderson Settlement in eastern Kentucky, Tex understood the needs of the people throughout the area. As the needs became apparent to Tex, so did the willingness of youth groups anxious to serve others. Tex was able to bring together both the needs and this desire to serve when he joined the staff of the Board of Discipleship, Section on Evangelism, of the United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. ASP then became a reality through the commitment of church youth and their counselors to minister to others.

Since 1976, ASP has been an independent, non-profit corporation. ASP continues a close relation with the United Methodist Church, however, continues to welcome participation from any denomination.

ASP Themes 

2009 - "Putting Faith Forward"    

2010 - "Eyes on the Prize: Racing to Serve"     
2011 - "Follow the Word, Transform the World"    

2012 - "All for One"  

2013 - "Radical Reversal"  

2014 - "Apostello, Life on Purpose"  
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2015 - "Becoming"  Walking Like Christ"

2016 - "Handiwork - Created to Serve"​

2017 - "Love in Action" 
  • 50% of the counties in Central Appalachia have only one hospital and about 1 in 5 do not have a hospital at all
  • Kentucky ranks 50th in the Nation for the number of adults who cannot read
  • In Hancock County, Tennessee the average income for a family of 4 is $14,000 a year
  • 1/3 of all of West Virginia’s children are born into poverty
  • In Logan County, West Virginia 40% of residents do not have safe drinking water
  • Kentucky has more miles of running water than any other state in the US other than Alaska
  • The first observance of “Mother’s Day” was in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908
  • The first free rural mail delivery started in Charles Town, West Virginia on October 6, 1896
  • The first shipment of coal out of Central Appalachia was in 1892 from Dickenson County, in Southwest Virginia; today one coal company owns approximately 40% of the land and between 60%-80% of all of the mineral rights in the county
  • Extraction abuses by the coal industry, especially through mountain top removal, has destroyed more than 1,000,000 acres of forests, 500 mountains, and buried over 1,000 miles of streams in the Appalachian region
  • At the Battle of Blair Mountain West Virginia in 1921, between 10,000 and 15,000 coal miners confronted state and federal troops in an effort to unionize the Southwestern West Virginia mine counties; this was the largest organized armed uprising in American labor history and led almost directly to the labor laws currently in effect in the US​
  • Sequoyah, of the Cherokee Nation, is the only known person in the world to single-handedly develop an alphabet; his work became the first written language for Native American people
  • Bristol, Tennessee is the “Birthplace of Country Music” which started with recordings made in the 1920s by the Carter Family (of Hiltons, Virginia), Jimmy Rogers, Ralph Perr-Victor and the Stonemans; Bristol is legally two cities – one in TN and one in VA – they share the same name and same main street, but have separate governments
  • Source: ​http://www.appalachiancommunityfund.org/