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Project GRAD 2016 Students

Project GRAD Volunteers Show Community Support

 
The Project GRAD Summer Institute is a pre-college program designed to provide a unique opportunity for students to participate and gain experience in an academic setting.  For two weeks, students are exposed to the academic expectations of college and the personal dimensions needed to succeed as a college student.

As part of this years program, 30 participant volunteers from Fulton and Austin East High Schools came out to show their support for the community and Odd Fellows Cemetery.  Some of these volunteers assisted in the mission of commemoration, cleaning headstones of Civil War Veterans and those in Cal Johnson’s family plot. Others helped in general maintenance, scouring the grounds for discarded trash and collecting fallen tree limbs. There was a giant limb that had fallen near S. Kyle and these youth quickly dismantled it and moved it to the perimeter.

This week more volunteers will work in the cemetery helping to locate all headstones of persons buried who were born in 1865 or before-this date marks the ending of the Civil War and with it, the institution of slavery.

Thanks was offered on behalf of the Knoxville ReAnimation Coalition, the communities of East Knoxville, and the City of Knoxville.  The efforts of the Project GRAD students was greatly appreciated as they continue to make ground in reclamation efforts and hope that people have had the opportunity to come by and see some of the changes that is taking place.