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The North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) recently awarded EdNC its public service award for our coverage and strategic support of western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
Since Helene hit North Carolina at the end of September 2024, EdNC has published 130 articles about the storm, its impact on western North Carolina, and how communities and organizations are working toward recovery.
On Aug. 18, four of EdNC’s team members — Caroline Parker, Emily Thomas, Hannah Vinueza McClellan, and Ben Humphries — accepted the award on behalf of the team at the NCPA’s annual awards banquet.
Parker and Thomas were an integral part of EdNC’s Helene coverage.
Just days after Helene, Thomas was the first person from EdNC’s team to report on the damage, where she attended a distribution site in McDowell County on Sept. 30 that was set up by education leaders to connect people with resources. The same day, she also visited a central communications station and met with the mayor of Old Fort to learn more about the area’s immediate needs.
Soon after, Parker traveled to western N.C. — navigating road closures — where in the first month after the storm, she covered stories in Rutherford County, at Old Fort Elementary School, Asheville City Schools, and on a Madison County nonprofit supporting students after the storm. Along the way, Parker joined in on the recovery work when possible, even donning a hazmat suit during a downtown Marshall clean up.
In the months after, Parker’s visits also led to her creation and production of EdNC’s podcast about those who showed up and helped after the storm, “Running Towards Disaster.” The series lifts up first-person perspectives of those who lived through, served and saved their communities in the aftermath of Helene, and who were educated in the community college system. You can listen to a one-hour cut of the series on EdNC’s website. The special episode is also set to air on WNCW on Sept. 30 at 9 p.m.
Across the EdNC team, members worked together to cover the impact of the storm on western North Carolina across the education continuum.
Liz Bell and Katie Dukes led EdNC’s coverage of how Hurricane Helene impacted early childhood, Parker and Mebane Rash led our K-12 coverage, and Thomas led coverage about community colleges. Vinueza McClellan, Bell, and Humphries covered state funding and policies for Helene recovery.
Robert Kinlaw, EdNC’s videographer, worked with Rash to produce a documentary about “Surge,” an award-winning play by students at Watauga High School about their experience after Helene. You can learn more about that play, and watch EdNC’s documentary, here.
In the first week after the hurricane, EdNC conducted a needs assessment to identify the least resourced counties that were hit hardest. Rash brought together a team of experts — Jeremy Gibbs, Deanna Ballard, and Kelley O’Brien — who provided strategic support to the rural school districts in Avery, Mitchell, Yancey, and Watauga, including using the content for stories to draft $5,787,740 in grant requests, raising $4,044,740 to date.
“Given the significant devastation faced after the storm and the ongoing challenges schools encountered during the rescue and relief phases — as well as in the effort to get students back into the classroom — it is clear that without EdNC providing this essential public service, there would have been no one with the capacity to write the grants that in turn allowed funds to flow early in the recovery phase,” said Elizabeth Brazas, the president of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.
“Thank you for being a blessing to all of us,” one superintendent told us. “These grant funds came at the right time,” another said.
The whole team extends our thanks to the many western North Carolina educators and writers willing to write about their experiences on the ground for EdNC.
As the one-year anniversary of the hurricane passes, our team remains committed to our coverage and strategic support of western North Carolina moving forward.
You can see all of EdNC’s coverage of Hurricane Helene here.
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