Reconnecting McDowell is a comprehensive, long-term effort to make educational improvement in McDowell County the route to a brighter economic future. Partners from business, foundations, government, nonprofit agencies and labor have committed, in a signed covenant, to seeking solutions to McDowell’s complex problems—poverty, underperforming schools, drug and alcohol abuse, housing shortages, limited medical services, and inadequate access to technology and transportation.
None of this will be easy or quick; the problems in McDowell County have been decades in the making. But by working together with the amazing people who live there, and by assembling, coordinating and sustaining the educational, social and economic supports they need, we are confident that this resilient community will be on a path to reconnecting its hopes for the future.