Valle Country Fair Announces 2024 Award Recipients – 16 New Grants Bring Total to $1.3M for 127 Organizations

VALLE CRUCIS, NC — Celebrating the harvest season with hand-made crafts, home-cooked food and live mountain music is full of fun and fellowship for the people of the Valle Crucis community, but what most makes the hard work rewarding is that the funds raised by the Valle Country Fair (VCF) go to support the work of 16 community programs and to aid area families with emergency needs.

Last year the Valle Country Fair channeled $88,000 back into the community through programs that lift up people in need. Be they feeding the hungry, educating children, caring for the infirm, or helping equip families to grow and prosper, these organizations are building community and improving lives for the people of the High Country.

This year the Mission and Outreach Commission (MOC) of Holy Cross Church approved 16 non-profit organizations to receive grants from 2023 Fair proceeds. Of those agencies, five are receiving grants for the first time. Since its beginning in 1979, the Valle Country Fair has distributed $1.3 million between 127 non-profit organizations in addition to thousands of High Country families with emergency needs.

Created to lift the financial burden of back-to-school shopping on local families, organizers of the Backpack 2 School Festival believe that every child deserves to start the school year feeling confident and prepared. They provide students with school supplies, new shoes and socks, backpacks, haircuts, and healthy food in an atmosphere of fun, dignity and respect. Funds from the Valle Country Fair will be used to purchase 150 high-quality backpacks to get students started out right.

The Children’s Council of Watauga County works to build a strong foundation for children’s learning. Their grant will be used for the DUAL school, the organization’s in-house half-day bilingual preschool. Half of the preschoolers are native English speakers and half are English learners. They all receive the highest quality of care and education through DUAL School as they prepare for kindergarten.

The Community Care Clinic provides free integrated health care to low income, uninsured individuals living in Watauga County and the surrounding area. The agency will use the VCF grant to help support the salary of its medical assistants. Vital to providing quality medical care to patients, medical assistants support the staff nurse practitioners and the volunteer doctors, manage patient education, draw blood for diagnostics, handle intake appointments and more.

Frontline to Farm is a program operated out of Appalachian State that helps military veterans and beginning farmers get started in sustainable farming as a livelihood. Valle Country Fair grant funds will be used to hold an entrepreneurship training event in Boone for ten participants over three days that is designed to help farmer veterans and community members build businesses around local produce and livestock.

Hearts of Hospitality House helps rebuild lives and strengthen community by equipping families experiencing homelessness and poverty-related crises to become self-sufficient and productive. The VCF grant enables Fresh Start to purchase items (like dishes and cutlery, pots and pans, or sheets and towels) that families need to set up housekeeping for the first time. The supplies let clients retain their limited financial resources for food and medical necessities.

High Country Caregivers is a stand-alone not for profit organization dedicated to relatives, respite, and resources for kinship caregivers. The VCF grant will help cover the operational expenses of the Kinship Navigation program, a project that seeks to provide support to caregivers who have taken on the duty and responsibility of caring for their relatives’ children.

Immigrant Connection of the High County is a Department of Justice recognized office that provides low-cost legal consultations to individuals who are seeking assistance with issues relating to immigration. The agency helps overcome the barriers of lack of finances and limited local access by providing high- quality, low-cost, local immigration legal services. Grant funds will be used to pay a part time bilingual intake specialist to assist the legal specialists in building trust and building capacity through personalized one-on-one attention to immigrants attempting to navigate the immigration system.

The Jason Project, Inc. hosts a wilderness-leadership-mentoring hiking program called “The Grandfather Challenge.” This program takes at-risk kids from Avery and Watauga counties on four rigorous hikes over the course of a month and provides each individual youngster with encouragement, leadership, experiences that build self-esteem, and confidence and relationships with caring adults. The Valle Country Fair grant will be used for boots and other hiking gear, professional hiking guides and other program costs.

The Mediation and Restorative Justice Center provides conflict resolution services, resources and support to individuals who are involved in or at risk of involvement with the justice system. Their grant will be spent on client services and recovery supplies for the organization’s community-centered drug recovery programs.

A small non-profit with a big impact, Mountain Alliance is credited with transforming teenage lives in Avery and Watauga Counties. Known for their Leadership Development Program and the School’s Out after-school academic support program, funds from the Valle Country Fair will be used to support experiential education and after-school programs in both counties.

Quiet Givers is a volunteer-driven organization that links people with needs with people who can help with their time, talent, or treasure. Quiet Givers gets the goods or services to the person who needs them, maintaining anonymity for both the giver and the receiver while directly addressing the need. Funding from the Valle Country Fair will be used to help meet the ever-changing and unique needs of as many as six families in Watauga County.

The Valle Crucis Elementary PTSO will use their grant to support and expand the school’s phenomenal enrichment program. Valle Crucis students can choose between experiential learning opportunities as varied as woodworking, quilting, pottery, jigsaw puzzles, sewing, piano, calligraphy, Lego robotics, poetry, golf and fly fishing. Emphasizing holistic development, these enrichment activities nurture students’ critical thinking, problem-solving skills, creativity, and social interactions, contributing to well-rounded individuals.

The Fair’s grant to the Watauga County Extended Learning Center will be used to support single parent and grandparent households that are dependent on after-school childcare. The after-school program gives working parent peace of mind that their children’s intellectual, social, emotional, and physical well-being are being looked after.

Watauga County Habitat for Humanity works to build safe and affordable homes with local families. Habitat homeowners exchange sweat equity for access to the no-interest, 30-year mortgage that makeshome ownership possible for the working poor. Fund from the Valle Country Fair will be used to purchase lumber to build the organization’s 35th house.

Watauga Housing Council is a volunteer led organization designed to increase the supply of attainable and affordable housing in Watauga County. Only recently founded in 2022, their objective is to establish communication and collaboration between those that that need affordable housing and the entities that can help supply it. The Watauga Housing Council will spend its VCF funds to purchase software and to hire a specialist to create, adapt, and maintain a housing resource list and database.

WAMY’s mission is to partner with families and communities to give the disadvantaged the support and tools they need to become self-sufficient. The grant from the Valle Country Fair makes it possible for several low-income children from Avery and Watauga Counties to attend summer programs that would otherwise be financially unattainable for their families.

A single-day harvest festival, The Valle Country Fair is held in a large hayfield located beside NC Highway 194 between Valle Crucis and Banner Elk. Admission is FREE and parking is available in the adjoining field for $10 per car, $25 for a small bus or van, and $50 for a motor coach. NO PETS are allowed.

Media sponsors for VCF 2024 are Curtis Media Group and Mountain Times Publications.

The event is produced by Holy Cross Episcopal Church in cooperation with the Valle Crucis Conference Center. Proceeds are used to provide grants to local non-profit organizations, and relief to local families with emergency needs. For more information, contact Holy Cross Church at (828) 963-4609 or visit the Fair on the Web at www.vallecountryfair.org.

MA_carrying totes.jpg: Mountain Alliance shows up in force to help with the logistics of putting on the Valle Country Fair as a truckload of teens show up to help transport equipment and supplies from storage to the field to set up for the event, only to return again after the crowds depart to help pack equipment and transport it back to the storage room. (Mountain Alliance photo)

VCPTSO fly fishing.jpg:  The grant to the Valle Crucis PTSO will support the opportunity for students to participate enrichment activities as unexpected as fly fishing. (Valle Crucis PTSO photo)

Watauga Habitat women's build.jpg — Watauga County Habitat for Humanity will be using its grant from the Valle Fair to buy lumber to build the 35th Habitat house in Watauga County. (Watauga Habitat photo)

Frontline to Farm veteran trainees.jpg:  2024 Frontline to Farm beginner farmer veteran participants get their hand in the dirt working alongside Cory Bryk at New Life Farm. (Frontline to Farm photo)