“The Catfish Capital of Alabama”

May 20, 2011 • 3:21 pm • POSTED BY jtondera

Last Friday I left the City of Brotherly Love for a trip to the American South. For my first ever visit to Alabama, I was heading to Greensboro to volunteer a couple days of my design time alongside a friend who works with HERO (Hale Empowerment & Revitalization Organization), a non-profit housing resource center.

Greensboro (population 2,731) is located in Hale County, one of the most poverty-stricken counties in Alabama, and draws the support of many non-profits and community service organizations. It was great to visit this town that I’d heard so much about — a design Mecca that has been receiving a good deal of press over the past few years. I met so many energetic and engaging people who were completing degrees, fellowships, or AmeriCorps service programs with various groups in town, such as: HERO, YouthBuild, Project Horseshoe Farm, Rural Studio, Pie Lab, and Habitat for Humanity.

While it was an inspiring and insightful trip, it was also an intense time to be visiting this region of Alabama. Although Greensboro was mostly untouched by the April tornadoes, many of the surrounding towns are suffering from extensive damage. The HERO office on Main Street was transformed into a FEMA Disaster Recovery Center for three of the days of my visit, as those affected community members came by for disaster assistance.

A big thank you to all the welcoming people of Greensboro that I met this past week! Looking forward to visiting again soon. (And stay tuned for an upcoming blog post that details the logo design process that my friend Julie and I created for a new program within HERO…!)

Above: Inside an in-progress schoolhouse behind Greensboro’s Main Street.

Above: A peek at the front counter and open kitchen of Pie Lab, described by the NY Times as “a combination pop-up cafe, design studio and civic clubhouse.”

Above: Two of the amazing $20k Houses ($10k labor and $10k materials), a concept created and realized by students of Auburn University’s RuralStudio. “The 20k house project seeks to address the pressing need for decent and affordable housing in Hale County. The aim is to produce a model home that can be reproduced on a large scale, becoming a viable alternative to the trailer in this area. The challenge is to build a house for $20, 000 that can be bought in conjunction with the ’502 Direct Loan.’”