The Maggie Valley Lions Club raised more than $10,000 for local charities with its 10th annual Golf Tournament and Silent Auction held Thursday, Aug. 23. 

One memorable afternoon several years ago, Perry Hines was sitting in the dining room of the Open Door after it had closed for the day, discussing with officials from a nearby church a grant opportunity, when there came a knock at the locked front door. 

As a startlingly cold winter lapses into a startlingly early spring, Jackson County leaders are pondering a question they’ve been struggling to answer for several years now: What is the best way to serve Jackson County’s homeless population? 

Charitable giving for nonprofits and churches in Haywood County is about to become much more efficient thanks to the implementation of the Charity Tracker internet service. 

There’s a road in Waynesville called the homeless highway. It runs from Frog Level to Hazelwood and during any given week, you’ll see folks walking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The end points of this beaten path are The Open Door and Haywood Pathways Center, two establishments offering physical and spiritual nourishment to weary souls.

There are still plenty of children in need this Christmas in Swain County and your donation to the Swain County Family Resource Center could help.

I don’t really want to go into the domestic circumstances that led up to it, but even though I had no car, no money, no work and now, nowhere to live, I walked down our darkened driveway in the middle of the cold starry night with little more than the clothes on my back.

Worse than the dearth of resources, I had no social support structure, and with no real knowledge of the resources available to someone in a short-term housing crisis, there I was, standing in a Maggie Valley gas station mere moments into Thanksgiving Day, in a short-term housing crisis.

With so many charities working to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, many Western North Carolina residents are curious about the best way to help.

As the sturdy old stake-bed dump truck — held together largely with rusty steel coat hangers — scrambled up the mountain laden with over a cord of firewood, the man behind the wheel finally found the address and pulled up the driveway.

Although Richard Reeves has spent the last 12 years splitting wood in an empty lot off Lea Plant Road in Hazelwood, he certainly hasn’t been alone in that endeavor; a plethora of locals — in that paradoxical individualistic, communal mountaineer spirit — give what they can, when they can, how they can.