ABOUT ASP / APPALACHIA

HISTORY OF ASP

 ​CENTRAL APPALACHIA
  
The 2025 Appalachia Trip (through Appalachia Service Project, Inc.) is a mission trip that FOA participates in.  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"  
​2015 - "Becoming"  Walking Like Christ"
2016 - "Handiwork - Created to Serve"​
2017 - "Love in Action" 
​2018 - "Called to Action" 50th Anniversary Celebration
​2019- "Be The Peace"
​2022 - "Rooted in Love"
2023 - "Love Strong"
2024 - 'Building Kindness"
​2025 - 
  • 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/ df

UNDERSTANDING APPALACHIA

                RADIO/PODCASTS WV Public Broadcasting
WV Public Broadcasting 
     http://wvpublic.org/#stream/0
Inside Appalchia
     http://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443598/inside-appalachia?fref=gc
The Front Porch
     http://www.npr.org/podcasts/464292636/the-front-porch?fref=gc
Us & Them: 'You're Either a Hiller or a Creeker' By TREY KAY • AUG 23, 2017
     http://wvpublic.org/post/us-them-youre-either-hiller-or-creeker?fref=g 
                                          VIDEOS
Appalachia-Bound: The Unheard Story of America's Coal Country
      https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZd3QRtSy5LM3rNSTnyRierHQeHrOsDyq
Because This is Where They Live Hear from ASP's founder himself, the Rev. Glenn "Tex" Evans, about the roots of ASP and the work that we do.
      https://youtu.be/bbEvNlD66FU?list=PLqRA_56QdMy1fU5hAVcZPqdtJdJhQJmj2
Many Hands: Rebuilding Appalachia Published on 13 Jan 2015 A presentation of OpportunityLives.com Executive Producer: John Hart A Citygate Films Production 
      https://youtu.be/QOJdJKH8nmY?list=PLqRA_56QdMy1fU5hAVcZPqdtJdJhQJmj2
Hidden America: Children of the Mountains
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct_QT6tBOG0 

                                              MOVIES
Movie: The Breaks: Centuries of Struggle Trailer (2017)
     https://www.facebook.com/breaksfilm/
Movie: Blood on the Mountain
     http://bloodonthemountain.com/#home
October Sky (1999)
Stranger With a Camera (2000)
     https://vimeo.com/channels/676200/54465749

                                     ARTICLES / BLOGS
This Appalachia Life
     https://www.thisappalachialife.com/?fref=gc
The Appalachian Project
     http://www.appalachianproject.org/
Last Breath When a coal miner's lungs finally gave out, his autopsy proved a top doctor was wrong — giving hope to thousands of other miners. The story of Steve Day and his final vindication. Posted on October 8, 2014, at 9:34 p.m.
     https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/how-a-coal-miners-autopsy-proved-a-top-doctorwrong?utm_term=.fs7e40NvY#.slAQ8veo7
50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back By Trip Gabriel April 20, 2014
     https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/us/50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-hardship-hitsback.html?hp&_r=3
Death Comes Sooner in Appalachia. It Comes Much Sooner in Eastern Kentucky. BY BILL ESTEP [email protected] AUGUST 24, 2017 5:33 AM  
  http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article169037857.html  What happened when Walmart left In West Virginia, the people of McDowell County can’t get jobs, and recently lost their biggest employer – the local Walmart store. They describe the devastating loss of jobs, community and access to fresh food by Ed Pilkington in McDowell County, West Virginia July 2017
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happened-when-walmart-left
The Self-Serving Hustle of “Hillbilly Elegy” FEBRUARY 27, 2017
      https://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/the-self-serving-hustle-of-hillbilly-elegy/
The visual story of what humans sacrifice in our relentless hunt for coal David Yanofsky & Akshat Rathi August 03, 2017
      https://qz.com/998890/the-visual-story-of-what-humans-sacrifice-in-our-relentless-hunt-for-coal/
Rural Appalachia lags the rest of the country in infant mortality and life expectancy By Carolyn Y. Johnson August 7   
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/07/rural-appalachia-lags-the-rest-of-thecountry-in-infant-mortality-and-lifeexpectancy/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=nextdraft&utm_term=.5c672451f29f
                                         BOOKS
Appalachian Lives
      https://www.amazon.com/Appalachian-Lives-Shelby-Lee-Adams/dp/1578065402?fref=gc
Life Is Like That by Tex Evans The Buffalo Creek Disaster: How Survivors of One of the worst Disasters in Coal-Mining History Brought Suit Against the Coal Company – and Won Gerald M. Stern 1976
Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–21
     https://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Mountains-West-Virginia-Mine/dp/0822954265?fref=gc
An Appalachia Reading List https://www.thisappalachialife.com/single-post/2017/07/05/An-Appalachia-Reading-List?fref=gc 
Grey Mountain by John Grisham
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
My Name is Child of God…Not “Those People” Julia Dinsmore
     https://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-Child-God-Not-ThosePeople/dp/0806656247/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305625129&sr=1-3 Poem: “My Name Is Not ‘Those People’”
      https://doorwayproject.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/my-name-is-not-those-people-4/

                                            REPORTS
Health Disparities in Appalachia August 2017 PDA, Inc., Cecil G. Sheps Center, Appalachian Regional Commission
​      https://www.arc.gov/research/researchreportdetails.asp?REPORT_ID=138
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    Please contact us for more information and learn about upcoming events and meetings!        ​[email protected]