AmeriCorps Members Organize Civic Service Project in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History Month

AmeriCorps members serving with the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia conducted a Civic Service Project in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History Month at the Mount Hope Community Center on February 11th, 2019.

The primary goal for this service project was to remove broken electronic equipment from the community center in order to help reduce the stress it was causing on the building’s second floor. With the removal of this debris community members and volunteers hope to prepare it for future use and further preservation projects.

The historic Loup Creek YMCA, now commonly known as the Mount Hope Community Center,  houses an operational commercial kitchen, a large conference space commonly referred to as the Band Room, and operates as a sports complex for 25% of the year. Co-organizers Carrie Kidd and Kyle Bailey also recruited volunteers to help clean up at Dubois on Main, a local museum dedicated to preserving the history of Dubois High School and black history in Fayette County.

Working in coordination with Mount Hope city officials and WVU Tech students, the project resulted in a great success for the Mount Hope community and residents of Fayette County.  Kidd, who serves as a Preserve WV AmeriCorps member with the Fayette County Resource Coordinator’s Office reports, “The historic Loup Creek YMCA is a vital asset in the Mount Hope community. Still currently being used as a sports complex for much of the year, it is important to maintain the structural integrity of the building. Removing the unused electronic equipment alleviated the weight placed on the second-floor ceiling. With help from the WVU Tech Golden Bears Baseball team, we can now concentrate further preservation efforts to the remainder of the facility.

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