On April 17, hundreds of Maryville College alumni from across the globe – including a
group in (city, state) – will participate in volunteer projects during MC’s inaugural KT Global event.
The new initiative, launched by the Maryville College Alumni Association (MCAA) in
October 2020, is aimed at uniting alumni worldwide to give their time and talent back to their own communities. Maryville College staff, faculty and students are also invited to participate. More than 30 projects are currently on the list, and more are expected to be added. Alumni are encouraged to do projects on their own, volunteer with close friends and/or families, or form a group of MC alumni in their community to volunteer together.
All participants are asked to observe COVID-19 safety precautions while volunteering.
The project in Alcoa, led by Whitney Winston '10 and Haleigh Davis '18, will include helping Camp in the Community prepare for both in-person summer camp and camp kit program for those who are unable to attend camp. Volunteers will be packing essentials kits that will allow campers to participate in all types of fun activities.
Named for Kin Takahashi, a student from Maryville College’s past, KT Global celebrates
the “can-do” spirit of a student who, during the 1890s, founded the College’s first football team and led a project to build Bartlett Hall on campus. KT Global is inspired by KT Week (later called KT Days), which was started 25 years ago by a group of alumni as an annual event on campus. Every year, about 100 MC alumni from across the country travel to Maryville to donate to the College something other than money – their time. They stay in the residence halls, eat in the dining hall and sign up for manual labor projects like pressure washing, painting, carpentry, masonry and landscaping.
The pandemic canceled the on-campus event for 2020 and 2021, but the Maryville
College Alumni Office wanted to find a way to enhance and build upon the event – and provide opportunities for alumni engagement worldwide. “Even during a non-pandemic year, it is not always easy or possible for alumni to return to campus to participate in an on-campus event,” said Angie Harris, director of alumni affairs at Maryville College. “That is why the MCAA started KT Global – so alumni all over the world could participate by organizing and developing volunteer service projects in the communities where they live.”
Projects have been planned in communities all over the United States – in Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Projects include volunteering with local food banks, landscaping and gardening, litter clean-up and recycling, and assisting non-profit agencies that help homeless families and foster children. Internationally, a project is planned in Kyrgyzstan, where an alumnus will lead a group to clean up destroyed sites from the Third Revolution in the capitol city of Bishkek. The full project list can be found at maryvillecollege.edu/ktglobal.
Maryville College students are participating in KT Global during KT WeekEND 2021,
also planned for April 17. Several projects aimed at making a positive environmental impact on the Maryville College campus – particularly the Maryville College Woods – are planned for the day. The 140-acre Maryville College Woods are a private, protected and managed multi-use forest, designated by the Tennessee Division of Forestry as a Stewardship Forest. “KT Global provides a way to connect to each other and engage with the College,” Harris said. “We are proud Scots, and as alumni, we want to carry on the spirit of service and the mission of the College. Alumni represent the College in our own communities, so it’s a great opportunity for alumni to give back time and talent, which is worthwhile to your own community and to the College at the same time.”
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Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of
America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years, we’ve educated students to be giving
citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200 students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”
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