We’re up against overwhelming odds.
Unemployment, poverty, substance abuse. Appalachia faces serious challenges.
The good news? Every person is a unfolding solution waiting to happen. We all have a part to play.
Kentucky is a goldmine of opportunities with pristine wilderness, unique heritage, and extraordinary people.
Let’s Work Together for a Brilliant and Beautiful Future.
Moriah Wilbur
Born in Lincoln County Kentucky and raised in Central Asia, Tajikistan where her family moved to work with NGOs. Moriah spent her childhood emersed in a diverse village community promoting sports for young girls. Acceptance to Berea College called her back to Kentucky.
Graduating with a degree in Health and Human performance and a deeper understanding of Appalachian communities and the challenges faced in the region, she began to look for practical ways to be part of the positive change in the region.
Moriah joined the Global Grant Writers collective (a grant writing training course and community that has won over $676M in grants) in 2022 and began working on various grant research projects that focused on community development in Kentucky.
In 2023, Moriah and Elijah had the incredible opportunity to travel the world on the Watson Fellowship to study community development and sustainable tourism. They spent this year collecting "bright spots," practical hope-oriented approaches to community change to bring back to Kentucky. Returning in 2024, they started SincerelyAlive, a grant writing and eco-tourism consulting business furthering their mission of a brilliant and beautiful future for Kentucky.
Elijah Hicks
Elijah moved to Kentucky as a young child. He quickly fell in love with the incredible diversity of the region’s forests, spending countless hours studying the incredible biodiversity of the region. In 2018 he illustrated “Ferns and Wildflowers of The Red River Basin,” published by the University of Kentucky press.
In 2020 he spent the summer working with the community non-profit Red River Gorge United (RRGU) researching economically sustainable options for immediate area, and the greater Eastern KY region.
The following summer he won a $6000 grant to study community and environmental activism writing under KY author Silas House. As part of the grant, he worked with RRGU publishing three articles in the Lexington Herald Leader on the future of eastern KY’s economy.
Disaster stuck at the 45th Appalachian Writer’s Workshop. In the flood of July 28th 2022, he watched as Troublesome Creek carried away cars, houses, and livelihoods. This experience hardened his resolve to find practical strategies for Eastern KY’s economy.
Grant writing, he realized was one area of particular need. In the fall of 2022 he enrolled in the year-long “Learngrantwriting.org” course and the Global Grant Writer’s collective which has secured over $676 million in nonprofit funding to date.
In the spring of 2023 he graduated from Berea College with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and Natural resources with a minor in English.
Soon after he was awarded the $40,000 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship grant for his project “Wilderness and Human Flourishing.” His quest to find sustainable strategies for community resilience took him to eight countries where he collected stories of practical hope with which to return and catalyze change in the economy and wilds paces of eastern Kentucky and Appalachian.
