We'd like to first thank you for your input and support! Last year, many of you, representing agencies, community and faith-based organizations, and leaders with a heart for under-resourced communities, came together, shared advice, offered support, and provided valuable insight on how we can work together to build what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the beloved community." We extend our sincerest thanks to Bruce Martin, the church and leadership team at 100x Church for embracing a heart and burden for the city. Many of you participated in these informational meetings and discussions over the past year and provided a framework for how we can come alongside agencies and organizations who are serving the needs of underserved populations and communities. The CornerStone Initiative, a nonprofit agency designed to promote networking opportunities and provide resource and technical support is the direct outgrowth and result of those early discussions. We've listened and learned alot about how and how not to move forward. And we're still learning and listening...And we've come away from those times of sharing with a greater commitment and resolve to engage... to share... and to challenge individuals, agencies, organizations, and communities to continue to work together, build together, and pray together until material and relational poverty is a thing of the past because the dream of the beloved community became reality.

After its formal ribbon-cutting service in April of 2012, CornerStone introduces its first ExecutiveDirector. Derek Lane is not new to the Huntsville, AL community. Some have known him as a classmate from Oakwood University, Alabama A&M, or staff member at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Derek is a nonprofit consultant, grant-writer, former full-time pastor and a past President of Mendenhall Ministries in Mendenhall, Mississippi, started by Dr. John Perkins. Derek is married to Mae Aldridge-Lane. They have four grown children, Kim, Kelly, Kassidy, and a teenage son, Derek Maurice. Derek has a passion for community development and serving under-resourced communties and has sensed a call, after starting his first nonprofit at 16 years of age, to serve others by engaging in community and faith-based work. We welcome Derek and his family back to the Huntsville, AL community!

CornerStone Receives $7,500 Contribution From Dynetics

The CornerStone Initiative received a major boost from Dynetics as it seeks to launch the Cornerstone Initiative, a new agency in Madison County, Alabama, set up to foster networking opportunities and provide support for the nonprofit sector and under-resourced communities. Funding will be used to support ongoing collaboration between Cornerstone and agencies currently serving the Madison County area. Support will also be used to develop asset-mapping tools and a resource database for direct service providers.

CornerStone's first Next Level Community Development Workshop

 CornerStone conducted its first community development workshop to provide training in the area of resource development and organizational assessments. Participants were represented from local municipal agencies as well as the nonprofit and faith-based community. Bruce Martin and Derek Lane shared presentations on donor development and organizational assessments. Those who attended were given the opportunity to share best practices and discuss ways in which agencies can use an interdisciplinary model to meet the many challenges of serving under-resourced communities.