Mount Airy City Schools is partnering with the company Grads Give to reach out to Mount Airy High School alumni, offering them a chance to keep up with what is happening at the high school as well as chances to support some of those efforts.
And the first project the city school system is tackling is the construction of a memorial to honor alumni who have served in the armed forces.
“We are holding a kick-off fundraiser for the memorial on Memorial Day,” said Carrie Venable, executive officer of communications for the city schools.
She said Randy Moore, a city board of education member, came up with the idea and the entire school board quickly supported the plan. Garrett Howlett, a career and technical teacher at the school, developed the design.
The memorial will be built on school grounds, at the corner of N. South Street and Orchard Street.
“Our goal is to have it built by next Memorial Day,” she said, with the fundraising effort for the money needed to build the memorial to officially begin on May 30, this year’s Memorial Day, at 9 a.m. “We don’t want to interrupt other Memorial Day plans going on. This ceremony will be a brief introduction to it.”
The fundraising goal for the memorial is $50,000 and, according to a new alumni page on the city school’s website — https://mountairyhighschool.gradsgive.org/ – the effort is already 30% of the way there.
While the monument is timely given its kick-off on the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, this will be far from the only effort the school system will undertake in its new effort to build stronger relations with alumni.
“We want to connect with the graduates,” she said. “In the day of social media, you’d think it would be easy. But connecting with graduates takes a lot of legwork…many of them have moved, changed their name, many of their parents have moved. This group (Grads Give), does the legwork for us. We’ll be able to keep our alumni connected to what’s going on.”
She said the school system could use stronger alumni relations to provide graduates a chance to come back to the school as speakers or in other roles. Partnerships with graduates have already been important to the school system.
“Our Richard Childress racing partnership has been a huge asset,” she said. That, according to Venable, was a city school graduate, Eric Warren, working at Childress and getting the NASCAR team involved with working with students from his alma mater.
“We want to stay connected with our alumni, to help our students grow and prepare for what lies ahead.” Using real-world partnerships through alumni is one way of doing that.
Besides the military, she said another group of alumni she would like to reach out to are those in the medical field who have come through he COVID-19 pandemic. “This is a group definitely deserving of recognition,” she said.
As for the first project, she said the Memorial Day gathering will be a brief ceremony, where a temporary structure or fixture will be erected that shows what the finished project will look like. She said the display will even include a QR code people can use in order to donate to the effort.
Those wishing to donate can do so through the alumni page on the website.
“They can make a one-time give, a monthly, annual, whatever works best for them, whatever they would like to do,” Venable said.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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