11/12/2025
New from EdNC
‘Mutual aid’ in the days and months after Hurricane Helene
Editor’s note: This article is part of EdNC’s playbook on Hurricane Helene. Other articles in the playbook are available here. What happens in a region ravaged by a natural disaster, where communications are disabled and the power is cut off indefinitely?...
Federal policies risk worsening an already dire rural teacher shortage
This article originally appeared in The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. When Ivy McFarland first traveled from her native Honduras to teach elementary Spanish in North Carolina, she spent a week...
Prioritizing literacy at the National Center for Families Learning Conference
North Carolina recently hosted the annual conference of the National Center for Families Learning. Attendees convened in Charlotte for three days of networking and learning strategies on how to improve family literacy, leadership, and overall engagement in schools. Inside the...
Perspective | North Carolina deserves a functional General Assembly
As North Carolina enters the second quarter of its fiscal year, it remains one of just two states in the nation without a comprehensive budget bill. Recent reports indicate there is no appetite among legislative leaders to return to Raleigh the...
The Editor’s Notes
So many people played a role in this article on the mutual aid networks that operated during and after Hurricane Helene.
At a dinner this summer, Mark Constantine shared his conviction about the difference community leaders and networks made after the storm.
It was a framework I had not heard before, but I had so many memories from the early days and weeks after the storm. It was a lightbulb moment for me. “That’s what I was seeing,” I thought.
Robb Webb later shared research with me about these networks after Hurricane Katrina.
Without ever calling them mutual aid networks, Elizabeth Brazas and her team were not only moving dollars 24/7, supporting the role of schools as key anchor institutions in a crisis, and investing in nonprofits to expand their footprint quickly, she was out there with us.
My thanks to Ben Humphries for taking my memories and tracking down the people and places I remembered from those early days, and then making meaning of them.
Russ Altenburg was with me the day we visited an apartment complex where migrant farmworkers live. Ben found the apartments, confirmed it was the right place, and then went back three times until he found the sources for this story.
Please email me at mrash at ednc.org if you have other examples of the ways mutual aid play a role in the recovery of our beloved western North Carolina.
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