Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation (Eckley Miners' Village Museum)

The Eckley Miners' Village Museum, under the direction of the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation, will reduce geographic and financial barriers to artifacts-based history education through the Coal Country Connection. This lifelong learning and outreach program will operate through three streams: 1) transportation scholarships for K-12 institutions to reduce budgetary hurdles to participating in Eckley’s on-site educational programs, which include guided interpretive tours of the museum’s exhibits, artifacts, and built environment; hands-on enrichment activities in 19th-century trades and crafts, and engagement with Northeastern Pennsylvania’s rich histories of immigration, resource extraction, and environmental change; 2) Traveling Trunk scholarships, which will provide low- or no-cost, in-class programming through the delivery of artifact-based education capturing Eckley’s main interpretive themes by a professional museum educator or trained volunteer; and 3) lendable multimedia teaching kits containing for-use collection items or replicas, lesson plans, enrichment activities, and classroom supplies to facilitate learning in cases where museum visits or classroom visits are not feasible.