Supporting Education for Girls in Rural Appalachia

**For Immediate Release**

The Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education (PAGE) receives major grant from The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust

DURHAM, NC [February 15, 2016] – The Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education (PAGE) has been selected for a major grant from The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, to support PAGE’s development of an innovative, replicable education program for underserved girls in Appalachian North Carolina.

The three-year, $210,000 grant will support PAGE’s efforts to promote 21st century learning opportunities for adolescent girls in rural North Carolina. PAGE is designed to help girls in rural mountain communities enter a world that is global, digitally connected, and navigated through literacy and leadership skills. Its goal is to help girls and young women create futures that include greater success in middle school and high school, graduation, and college, so that they can become leaders in a new Appalachia.

The adolescent girls served by PAGE live in rural, and sometime remote communities in Madison County, such as the community where Mikalah Creasman is growing up.

Mikalah is growing up in a mountain holler called Shut In: a clustering of wood frame homes and single wide trailers close to the East Tennessee border.  A gifted student with a love for digital learning, reading, and photography, Mikalah dreams of going to college and majoring in English. Without PAGE, girls such as Mikalah face a more uncertain future: high rates of school dropout, a loss of jobs in their communities, and a dearth of
out-of-school and summer learning opportunities that address their needs.

Thanks to new funding from The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, PAGE is going to develop a replicable model of out-of-school education that will empower girls such as Mikalah with skills in digital learning, literacy, and leadership – 21st century tools that girls can invest back into their rural communities.

PAGE’s mission of creating educational opportunities that will empower Appalachia’s girls is aligned with the Kenan Charitable Trust’s Education giving focus: to invest in high quality and innovative educational programs that create opportunity and improve quality of life. Its service to some of North Carolina’s most vulnerable girls and young women also builds on the Trust’s tradition of service to North Carolina communities.

PAGE’s founding director is a native daughter of Western North Carolina: she grew up in a small town, attended public schools, and later received a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She founded PAGE so that girls in low-income rural communities can achieve their life dreams through education.

This generous grant has a 1:1 match requirement. For more information about joining the effort to support high-quality education for Appalachian girls, please visit our website or contact PAGE’s Executive Director.

Deborah Hicks-Rogoff
www.carolinapage.org
Email: dhicks(at)duke.edu
Phone: 919-681-7931