The Friday Finish - $1.9 million for Broadband - Like Mamaw's Quilt - Giving Hearts Don't Retire - Double or Triple Your Gift
- Tim Crawford
- Jun 5
- 7 min read
June 5, 2026
Red Bird Mission, Inc., Receives $1.9 million from Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER Initiative
The vision of providing opportunities for training and working from community that Red Bird leadership began to put on paper six years ago is taking a huge step forward with this week’s public announcement of a major grant award. Red Bird Mission, Inc., has been awarded $1.9 million by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) for the Red Bird Mission Connected Campus Initiative that will bring reliable, high-speed internet to its campus in Clay County, Kentucky.
Red Bird Mission will partner with an Internet Service Provider to install a new fiber-optic network that will deliver faster, more reliable internet service and provide backup connections during outages. Connect Humanity and Mountain Association will be assisting with the implementation and matching funds of this grant.
The decline in available jobs in the coal industry and the need to use Red Bird Mission (RBM) assets to create opportunities for the people in our service area began to take shape during the COVID pandemic. Aided by technical expertise from the College of Business at the University of Louisville, former RBM Executive Director Kari Collins brought Red Bird staff and board together to create a plan for Red Bird STEAM that included strategies and plans for Red Bird Christian School students and a separate plan for adults in the community.
Karla Roberts, Red Bird Mission Grants Manager, wrote an ARC POWER Initiative planning grant that provided architectural plans in 2024 for an adult learning and work from community building, the future Red Bird Strong Job Development and Community Center. Connect Humanity came alongside Karla with technical assistance in 2025 to win a USDA distance learning grant that will provide equipment for adult learning centers on the Red Bird Mission Queendale and Beverly campuses.
High quality, reliable broadband is an integral part of advancing the vision of bridging students and adults to opportunities for training at colleges and technical schools as well as providing internet-based employment. The RBM Connected Campus Initiative grant will also upgrade campus Wi-Fi, replace outdated equipment, modernize the computer lab, and train staff to effectively use the new technology at Red Bird’s Queendale Campus.
This award is made available through ARC’s POWER (Partnerships for Opportunities and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) Initiative. POWER offers federal grant funding for projects that help Appalachian coal communities expand economic opportunities by creating high-quality, in-demand jobs in multiple industries, attracting new sources of private investment and providing comprehensive workforce services and skills training.
Stitched Like Mamaw’s Quilt: Deep Roots and Generations of Compassion
Down here at Red Bird Mission, the roads bring all kinds of folks through our mountains. Some come carrying a heavy load of life’s troubles, and others show up with open arms, just looking for a way to lift someone else up. This week, I saw two beautiful paths cross right here—stories stitched together like mamaw’s quilt, showing how everyday people are passing down a legacy of pure, unselfish kindness from one generation to the next. On what seemed like just another morning, a trailer rolled into our Community Outreach, bringing a whole mountain of kindness that we never could have pulled together by ourselves.
Rev. Bill Allen and his son had made the long, 12 ½ hour journey down from New York State, bringing a powerful reminder of how connected we all really are. They represent the First United Methodist Church of Canandaigua, a group of folks that look at the world through a lens of three mission fields: local, domestic, and international. Under Reverend Allen's leadership, their church took a local passion for helping others and expanded it worldwide, reaching all the way to Haiti and India. But when it came to doing something meaningful closer to home, their hearts settled right here in our neck of the woods at Red Bird.
They brought a whopping 20,634 diapers, alongside everyday essentials for our women and cherished elders. To look at those numbers, you’d think it comes easy, but this partnership is proof of how planting a small seed of goodness has a way of multiplying. Five years back, when the church first started gathering things for our folks, that initial run was just about 3,400 diapers. They had to skip a year after that, but when they came back, the number jumped to 11,000. By last year, the community's heart had grown to 17,000. This year, they set a bold goal of 20,000, and their folks stepped up to blow right past it. This trip marked the fourth time in five years they’ve made that long drive down to the Red Bird mountains.
Looking at those stacks of necessities, you knew it was going to lift a heavy burden off the shoulders of our families. There was something mighty special about watching a father and his son working together, lending their strength to a community far from their own front porch. While that trailer was being unloaded and stocking our shelves full, another corner of our Community Outreach was also being filled with something special.
Since 2006, a sweet lady named Judy Gushen has walked the halls, volunteering for our Women and Children Ministries programs in the Christmas Room and Baby Pantry. Judy doesn't only volunteer; she invests her very soul—a good portion of her own money and even her own craft creations—to stock our shelves with supplies, toys and baby items. For Judy, it’s a living monument to her family legacy. She first heard about the Red Bird Mission through loved ones who have since passed on. Coming here is her way of keeping that beautiful family tradition alive. This time, she even brought her daughter along, bridging the past with the present and showing what it means to pass the torch of kindness down the line.
Listening to Judy talk about the days gone by, she shared some wisdom about life. She told me, plain and simple, that when you consistently put compassion out into the world, that very same goodness has a way of finding you and returning the favor.
Between that father and son unloading supplies and a sweet lady keeping her family’s tradition alive, you see how our community stays stitched together. It’s all about the folks who refuse to let that chain of kindness break. It’s in the hard work of unloading a trailer, and the generosity of buying toys for youngins you may never meet. I’ve seen a tidal wave of goodness flowing into Red Bird this week, and as long as there are folks like Rev. Allen and Miss Judy, that ripple effect of kindness will keep rolling down these mountains for generations to come.
Kayla Smith - Development Gifts and Media
Items Still Needed for Backpacks
You can help the Backpack Assistance program where Judy was working this week. We need college ruled paper, Kleenex boxes, children’s toothpaste, classroom sized Germ-X, construction paper, index cards, primary paper, high school size backpacks, and washable markers! Please ship to Red Bird Mission Community Outreach, 70 Queendale Ctr, Beverly, KY 40913-9607.
Giving Hearts Don’t Retire
We connected on Tuesday with two members of the Pioneer Sunday School Class while in Louisville, Kentucky for the mission displays at the Kentucky Annual Conference. Gwyn Morton and Don Christensen are two of the mainstays of the food collection drives that they delivered to Red Bird Mission to help fight hunger in the mountains for many years.
The class decided a few years ago that because of declining health and their dwindling numbers that the best way to sustain their food ministry for Red Bird was to find a younger group at their church, Christ Church United Methodist, to pick up the mantle. The All Things New class now heads up food drives and makes the deliveries twice a year, but you can’t just retire compassionate hearts.
Gwyn was in the neighborhood and stopped by the church as Angela and Tim Crawford were packing up the annual conference display before heading back to Red Bird. You could see joy welling up for her to make a Red Bird connection with folks that she’d come to know in those trips as co-workers and friends. There wasn’t time for Gwyn to get late lunch or coffee because her afternoon plan was to go to a nearby Kroger store to buy discounted food to send to the Red Bird Mission Crisis Emergency Food Pantry the next time the “young folks” come to Red Bird.
Don didn’t make it to the church, but connected by phone before the Crawfords left Louisville. His plea – could they take back new space heaters, tools, canopy tents and maintenance supplies for Red Bird to use that he had purchased for resale and stored away? The seats went down on the minivan and the needed items were loaded in just a few minutes. His family is downsizing, and he’s planning to sort through equipment and items Red Bird needs to make another trip to Red Bird. He was also excited to report that the Pioneer Class is committing to give one of their weekly offerings each month to Red Bird Mission.
These two and their classmates are examples of the many that have supported Red Bird for the past 105 years. Physical bodies may slow down and need to retire from a job or career, but giving hearts don’t retire from doing all they can, as long as they can to serve God’s children in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky.
Double or Triple Your Gift
If you want to double, or sometimes triple, your gift to Red Bird, you might be able to do that through an employer match. We received word yesterday about a gift of $300 coming to Red Bird Mission that tripled because Humana Foundation offers special 2:1 giving days to encourage charitable giving among their employees.
Generally, Humana and other companies that faithful Red Bird supporters have leveraged to increase the gift coming to Red Bird are most often a 1:1 match with a maximum yearly amount allocated per employee. Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and UHG are a few of the companies that matched gifts in recent years.
Double the Donation reports from its website that 65% of Fortune 500 companies offer employee charitable gift matching. Even though $2-3 billion is donated yearly from corporations through employee matching programs, they estimate that between $4 billion and $7 billion goes unclaimed by employees each year.
If you’d like to find out if your company matches charitable gifts, you can search online, or contact your HR, payroll or community relations/corporate social responsibility department.
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