Community Group Shares Its Story

The Community Group formed to engage African Americans in Montgomery County, Virginia in their own history and culture. Only if we engage together, they said, will we be able to contribute fully. Only if we know our own story fully will we be able to make sure the wider community values and respects African Americans for the great legacy that we are.

The group, this day in August, met at historic Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church to reflect on the state of Black America. The group invites African Americans to convene like this regularly to develop and deepen a shared understanding of Black culture and history.

The Community Group has started its own philanthropy, the New Mountain Climbers Endowment. The fund has made grants to support African American community work such as child tutorial programs and a captial campaign for Christiansburg Institute which was established in 1866 by the Federal Freedmen's Bureau (The Quakers) to bring education to previously enslaved African Americans.

The New Mountain Climbers is one of nearly a dozen African American philanthropies forming a network of community- based, grassroots change organizations. Through support from the Ford Foundation, The Community Investment Network and Hindsight Consulting this pioneering group is linked to colleague organizations from Louisiana to Maryland. It is the first black philanthropy in southwest Virginia.