The Fairhope Educational Enrichment Fund has worked for the past 20 years to enhance public schools in Fairhope and Baldwin County with a variety of science and art education and facilities. The organization was recently awarded a grant from the Les Paul Foundation to start a new guitar class focusing on the late musician and inventor.
I spoke with Cori Yonge about the organization and the recent grant. Ms. Yonge is the executive director of the Fairhope Educational Enrichment Fund, or…
Cori Yonge: FEEF, as we call it. We essentially raise money to put programs into the schools that are programs that would not be available with state and local funding. Enrichment programs, specifically.
Alex AuBuchon: Tell me a little bit about how the organization got started, and what the organization has done and hopes to do in the future.
CY: The organization was started twenty years ago by a group of parents who came to the principal of what was then the Fairhope K-1 Center. And they said “Hey, let’s have a marine biology lab, because here we are, we live on Mobile Bay, and we should teach our children to be good stewards of the environment and to learn about what’s in their bay and how to take care of where they live.”
So it started with the Pelican’s Nest. They raised the money. They built the building in one year. They became a non-profit and raised the money for the building all at the same time.
And after the Pelican’s Nest Science Lab, we realized we needed to be sustainable. So we have an endowment. The community and the board of directors raised the money to have an endowment, so my salary and our administrators’ salary, and much of our operating costs come from that. So when we raise money, those dollars go directly into the schools.
The next thing we did was to help put a black box theater at Fairhope High School, so that the theater department has a wonderful place to perform. For the past several years, we’ve been putting things in the schools that try to reach as many children as possible. The piano lab at Fairhope High School, the theater department, the band, choral, visual arts at Fairhope High School… In the intermediate school we’ve put in a science lab teacher so kids can have access to hands-on experiments. And at the Fairhope Elementary School, we fund school-wide art and music. There are 1100 children in that school, and it’s very difficult for one art or music teacher to give them everything they need, so we bring in visiting artists and visiting musicians to supplement that art and music.
AA: I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, the Pelican’s Nest Science Lab. I know it’s been extremely well-received in the community; it’s won a bunch of awards… Tell me about the science lab and what students are able to get out of it.
CY: Sure. Well, what happens is kids come and… Fairhope students use it 50% of the time and then Baldwin County students are able to use it 50% of the time, because the county actually does help us keep our teacher in there, and we like to make that accessible to all the children in Baldwin County Public Schools.
What they get, in the very youngest ages… Of course, the most popular field trip is to go down to Mobile Bay, to have the parents take the seine nets out, and to have the children come back and examine the specimens, put them under the microscope, even in second and third grade, to do that.
As they get a little older, into about the sixth grade, they’re looking at more of a STEM curriculum, where they experiment with making their own robots and look at how a remotely operated vehicle works underwater. So those are some of the lessons that they take back to the classroom. In general, their teachers will also prep them before they get there so that it’s not just in a vacuum. They have the education leading up to it.
AA: Now I want to shift gears a bit from science to the arts, which I know FEEF also has a big focus in, and this grant that just came about for the Fairhope project. Can you tell me a bit about how this grant came about and what it will enable?
CY: We were very fortunate to get a grant for electric guitars from the Les Paul Foundation, and that’s for the students at Fairhope Middle School. Several years ago, we realized that there were not a lot of electives at Fairhope Middle School for students to do. There was band, we had art, there was consumer science, but we had 800 kids and we really wanted to expose them to a lot of different types of music and art curriculum.
So they started a guitar class, and all of the students have their own acoustic guitars. But with this Les Paul Foundation grant, we’re going to be able to buy somewhere between 5 and 8 electric guitars for the class. And the kids will be able to learn about the life and times of Les Paul, to play the guitar, and to really understand how he changed the face of music as we know it today.
AA: Ms. Young, we’re running a bit short on time, but is there anything else you’d like to add about that grant or about your foundation in general?
CY: Sure, well, I think it’s really important to understand that we’re a 501(c)(3), so our organization receives all of our funds from the community. Without the community, we wouldn’t be able to put all of these extras into the schools. It is really heartwarming to see how much the community cares about its schools, and how parents, corporations, and small businesses all participate in the schools to give students in Fairhope the best education that they can.