Appalachian Volunteers
Appalachian Volunteers (AV) was a non-profit organization engaged in community development projects in central Appalachia that evolved into a controversial community organizing network, with a reputation that went "from self-help to sedition" as its staff developed from "reformers to radicals," teaching things from Marx, Lenin and Mao, in the words of one historian, in the brief period between 1964 and 1970 during the War on Poverty. == Origins == The Appalachian Volunteers (AV) began as an activity of the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM), which had been headquartered in Berea, Kentucky, since 1925.