PARTNERS & PROJECTS
EDUCATION
Simulated Workplace
In collaboration with the West Virginia Department of Education and the Community and Technical College System of West Virginia, and programs like the SkillsUSA, West Virginia, the WV Visionary Group worked to create a dialogue between targeted business and community leaders as well as high school-aged students and teachers across the state.
This initiative started in late 2014 and was developed in an effort to support West Virginia's educational system and programs including simulated workplace classrooms in targeted high schools and communities and technical centers throughout the state. In doing so, we worked to bring business, community and education together by connecting the industry with educators and students through mentoring and professional development services in our schools. We also encourage students, and others, to consider funding opportunities in their communities that could go toward the goal of ensuring every student in West Virginia to have a computer or electronic device by 2022.
Life, Leadership & Recovery
In 2007, Tom McJunkin, founder of Education Elevators (EE), created this program to offer businesses a cost-effective way to be a part of the solution by providing the human capital to support, inspire and "elevate" students. The mission of Education Elevators, now led by his daughter Allison, is to elevate West Virginia children by fostering mentoring relationships that fuel their curiosity and support their abilities to learn and thrive. EE is for every child to reach their unique potential.
Greater Recovery and Community Empowerment (GRACE) Academy focuses on self-help community resources. The idea is to connect those addicted to opioids to available resources, then make them responsible for their own recovery by setting goals, motivation, along with other objectives. There are training sessions designed for school nurses, psychologists and counselors, along with classroom teachers, social workers, and community members working with schools, parents, grand-families, law enforcement, correctional officers and veterans.
Floods of Support
In summer 2016, following the flood that devastated numerous schools and educational centers in several counties in West Virginia that impacted more than 62,000 students and left more than 1,200 people homeless in the state. The WV Visionary Group teamed up with the Education Alliance on its statewide Floods of Support funding initiative. The Floods of Support campaign raised nearly $55,000 for our teachers, which was distributed to them in spring 2017. The focus of this was to raise money that would go toward technology enhancement or replacement in the affected school.
