Category: Articles
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School Innovation Zone Act Passes
HB 109 was passed this week and opens the doors for communities to create fundamentally different schools. That is, if you can get the support of the teachers, parents, the school district, Dept. of Educ, and State Board. There are a lot hurdles to jump, T’s to cross and meetings to hold. But, it is…
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West Virginia Entrepreneurs Corner Salsa Market
Well, perhaps Frito Lay isn’t shaking in its boots yet, but West Virginians do seem to make some mean salsa. Two of the most award-winning salsa suppliers are Maggie’s Salsa of Charleston and Blue Smoke Salsa of Ansted. Magdalena De La Cruz Cook-Garcia, founder of Maggie’s Salsa, has been honored by the WV chapter of the U.S.…
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Not “Tee Up!” … I said “Tweet Up!”
Forget the white Christmas; I’ve been dreaming about a Charles Town tweet up! Not too long ago I came up with the idea of having a local “tweet up” for Charles Town, WV, folks on Twitter. A tweet up, for those who are not in the Twitter know, is just geek speak jargon used to…
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McDowell County Creates Opportunities with Micro-Loan Program
Few regions of the country have experienced as much economic pounding as McDowell County, WV. Once a booming coal county with close to 100,000 people in the mid-20th century, it has been pummeled by coal industry job losses and flooding through the years. The latest 2007 census estimate was 22,000. Can you imagine a 78%…
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The Block: An Urban to Rural Youth Connection
Create West Virginia diversity team member, Crystal Good, recently traveled to NYC to develop a relationship between Create West Virginia and The Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Art Center (The Center).Good along with The Center director, Clayton Evans, are seeking a partnership that will bridge the space and perceived differences of youth in Rand, WV and…
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TippEd(ucation)
Public K-12 education “tipped” this legislative session, an “idea has crossed a threshold, started to tip and begun to spread.” Many of you recognize this reference to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and how it applies to what we have been discussing. The idea that reached a boiling point this spring was that for all of…
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Help Select WV’s Top 101 Places to Dine (McDonald’s Doesn’t Count)
A lot of people don’t realize how important local cuisine is to a cultureand sense of place. Our country has been so oversaturated with national chains and franchises that much of the local “flavor” has been lost. That’s why we’re excited to see the WV Division of Tourism and the Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia…
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Barbie Responds: Exclusive Interview with Create West Virginia
We here in West Virginia have a unique knack for generating, um, interesting media coverage for our fine state. The latest was spawned by Delegate Jeff Eldridge of the West Virginia Legislature who submitted a well-intentioned, but perhaps misguided, bill to ban Barbie because of the doll’s tendency to place too much importance on physical…
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The Importance of Education in a Down Economy
We are certainly hearing a lot about the bad economy. While West Virginia is said to have it better then most, there has been more then enough outlets sharing the news of layoffs in our home state. One large indicator for the economy is the “unemployment rate.” It is a percentage of those in the…
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Social Media and Mountaintop Removal
You may not have been able to attend the recent hearing held by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) regarding mining on Gauley Mountain, but you could almost be there thanks to social media technologies such as Twitter. With coverage from the likes of the Smithsonian Magazine, interest is certainly sky high on…