Foxfire Fund

Organization Description

Founded in 1966, The Foxfire Fund, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization responsible for overseeing the ongoing production of The Foxfire Magazine, the publication of The Foxfire Book series and companion titles, interaction with visitors and school groups at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center, and the training of educators in the Foxfire Approach to Teaching and Learning.

Students at Rabun County High School are responsible for producing The Foxfire Magazine – going out into their community and preserving their heritage by interviewing their elders. Over 40 years worth of collected documentation about the culture of Southern Appalachia exists through the efforts of the Magazine program. The 12 volumes of The Foxfire Book series have sold nearly 9 million copies and since 1976, over $700,000 in scholarships have been awarded to Foxfire students, with assistance from philanthropist Julia B. Fleet. Annually, the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center provides dozens of school, home-school, and private tour groups with fun and educational exposure to this unique mountain culture, while thousands of casual visitors take self-guided tours of the Museum.

In addition to the magazine and subsequent books, "Foxfire" is a method of classroom instruction—not a step-by-step checklist, but an over-arching approach that incorporates the original Foxfire classroom's building blocks of giving students the opportunity to make decisions about how they learn required material, using the community around them as a resource to aid that learning, and giving the students an audience for their work beyond the classroom.

Most importantly, "Foxfire" is the living connection between the high school students in the magazine program and their heritage, built through interaction with their elders. Students, by their own choices, have worked for four decades to document and preserve the stories, crafts, trades, and the personalities of their families, neighbors, and friends.