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By Emma Castleberry<\/p>\n
Partnership for Appalachian Girls Education (PAGE) is a Madison County nonprofit program committed to offering meaningful learning opportunities for girls in order to help them achieve a bright and impactful future. \u201cThis is a big-picture mission that goes beyond just getting girls into college,\u201d says program director Maia Surdam. \u201cOur projects have specific themes, like storytelling, oral history or STEAM, but through these experiences we aim to help girls gain confidence in themselves, learn how to be good stewards of the environment and appreciate the richness and diversity of their local, regional and global communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
PAGE began as a summer program in 2010, during which nine girls entering the sixth grade completed a Digital Storytelling project. In 2012, a cohort of 20 girls traveled to Duke University for a three-night campus immersion experience. By its third year, PAGE had participants in 6th, 7th and 8th grades, requiring two separate summer programs. The steady growth continued, with more girls participating in both the middle and high school programs each year, and many returning to volunteer as college interns.<\/p>\n
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PAGE\u2019s present offerings go far beyond the initial summer program, including a food program that partners with local farmers; an oral history project rooted in the ancient Appalachian tradition of storytelling; a literature program that grew out of PAGE book clubs; and PageLabs, a collaborative learning experience that integrates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) with the arts and humanities. \u201cWe also launched an After School Program in the fall of 2021 at Madison Middle School,\u201d says Surdam. \u201cBased on our students\u2019 feedback, we now hold that for 12 weeks in the fall and another 12 weeks in the spring. We do an assortment of hands-on activities that allow students to \u2018explore our own backyard,\u2019 including the kitchen, the garden, the orchard, the stream and the forest.\u201d<\/p>\n
PAGE was founded by Deborah Hicks-Rogoff, who grew up in a working-class family in the Western North Carolina mountains. At 17, she was offered admissions to a local two-year college with all costs covered by a series of scholarships. After earning her doctorate in education at Harvard University, she returned to her homeland to alleviate some of the difficulty faced by young girls in rural Appalachia. \u201cSome girls face economic insecurity that has endured across generations in rural working families,\u201d says Hicks-Rogoff. \u201cFor other girls, their geographic isolation has been a challenge. Some girls served by PAGE face long bus rides to school each day, in the most extreme cases over an hour one way over winding mountain roads.\u201d These challenges were magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit rural communities especially hard because of the lack of access to virtual learning.<\/p>\n
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During the pandemic lockdown months, PAGE reorganized as an independent nonprofit organization. \u201cOne of the things that the pandemic taught us as an organization is that we would need to be nimble, creative and flexible if we were going to be able to continue our work with girls in Appalachia,\u201d says Surdam. \u201cIn order to fully make our own decisions about the best way to proceed with our work, we decided to form our own 501(c)3.\u201d This change firmly rooted PAGE in Appalachian North Carolina and allowed the organization to expand its partnerships. It also resulted in some powerful changes in the leadership team and more year-round staff, thus strengthening PAGE\u2019s connection to the community. \u201cFor example, we are working more closely with the counseling team at Madison Middle School to help us recruit girls who would benefit the most from PAGE,\u201d says Surdam.<\/p>\n
Maria McDaris, a homeschooled student living in Madison County, started with PAGE in 6th grade. Now 16, she\u2019s a part of the organization\u2019s High School Program. McDaris\u2019 digital storytelling project, which she completed last year, examines her search for a voice through the debate team and her hopes that she will learn to be more confident in expressing herself. She\u2019s been involved in the Heritage Garden PageLab, where girls learn about plant science, soils and growing traditions in a pop-up garden classroom, and she\u2019s also a participant in the PAGE College Pathways program. \u201cI learned stuff about college to help me prepare, things I didn\u2019t know I needed, like a resume,\u201d she says. \u201cIn each one you have something different to learn. It\u2019s really helped me.\u201d McDaris isn\u2019t sure where she wants to attend college yet, but she wants to become a rehab nurse, simply because she loves helping people.<\/p>\n
\u201cPAGE was founded with the belief that investing in world-class education for girls in WNC can be life-changing for girls who have the potential to become our region\u2019s next young women leaders,\u201d says Hicks-Rogoff. \u201cThrough inspiring education and our sustained, long-term support, our goal is to help each girl we serve achieve her full potential and her desired future. Investments in education for girls, we believe, are investments in families and communities in WNC.\u201d<\/p>\n