Lill's letter to future STAY Project leadership

12/13/2018

Dear STAY membership,

Two years (and one extra month!) later, it is my time to go. So much has changed since fall of 2016, when I was elected to serve on the Steering Committee for the STAY Project. I’ve taught and learned, healed and struggled, and mostly, I think, figured out exactly why a youth liberation movement in central Appalachia is and has been crucial to me for so long. I’ve learned what it’s like to be heard and invested in, I’ve also learned when to step back and let others lead the way. I’ve helped to create a workshop about combating white supremacy and collective liberation in Appalachia, and dream to build a whole curriculum about how we- mountain youth, are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and we will be the ones to get us free. I hope you will take what you need from the work we’ve done for the last two years and leave the rest. I hope you will add to our work and make it better, stronger, and more resilient. STAY is about creating space, it is also about more than space, it’s a feeling, a movement, a thing you can carry with you wherever you go and take pride in being a young person who is trying to stay in this place (or about how you can leave the mountains, but your legacy will always touch down on and inspire your comrades here at home).

I hope you will apply to join STAY’s Steering Committee because we need leaders like you NOW. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do.

With love and solidarity,

<3 Lill

0 Comments

Appalachian Love Stories

Appalachian Loves Stories was a storytelling project started at the Stay Summer Institute in 2014 and has expanded into a campaign focused on making space for the stories of young people in Appalachia who may have no other space to tell their story.

So what does STAY mean when we talk about our Appalachian Love Story? We're talking about "love" as a verb, as an action, as a process we are continuing to change and shift. We are talking about love as a choice, like how we choose to love Appalachia and how we choose to stay even when it might be easier to leave. We are talking about love as an intersectional youth movement that is building towards a regenerative and inclusive Appalachia. We are talking about love being hard work sometimes, and about how love comes with both joys and heartache. We are talking about how love is building a network of young people who uplift and support each other. So we are asking y'all to tell us how do you love Appalachia? Tell us how it is hard to love Appalachia. Tell us how you choose to stay. Tell us your Appalachian Love Story so we can feature it on the blog. #appalachianlovestory

#Appalachianlovestory