July 4th 2025 Parade
We loved participating once again in our 2025 4th of July parade! Thanks to all our team for joining us on the float. We just love throwing out candy and little toys to the kids in the community!
Phase 2 Of Building Project Begins
As June 2025 began, so did phase 2 of our Building Project. This portion of the project begins with framing, which will last for several weeks as our experienced volunteers work on the project.
Our volunteers have spent hours contributing their strength and talents to help make this part of the project a success.
Keep up to date with our project progress here.
Summer MEal Program 2025 Begins
Beginning on June 2, 2025: we began to distribute meals to teens and kids in Pleasatnville. We are able to do this thanks to our partnership with Knoxville Food Youth Initiative (KFYI) and St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. KFYI provides the food and runs the program. St. Paul’s UMC gives us a location to distribute those meals from, as well as volunteering to help distribute. Our PvilleYI volunteer team helps unload, fill bags, tie them, and distribute the meals every Monday Wednesday and Friday. Each bag contains 2 (M,W) or 3 (F) days worth of breakfast and lunch.
Our first week of meal distribution brought us a lot of joy. Not only did we get to see so many smiling faces, but we got to enjoy the St. Paul’s UMC tulip tree which was in full bloom!
We will continue to serve meals every MWF until August 1st.
For more information about the program, you can go here.
This work is made possible by our partnership with Knoxville Food Youth Initiative and St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.
Building Project: Phase 1 Complete
PHASE 1 COMPLETE
Phase one of our building project began on April 4, 2025 and was completed on May 31, 2025. This process involved demolition and foundation.
Phase 1 Progress:
4-28-25: Demolition Begins
5-1-25: Demolition is complete.
5-7-25: Foundation Prep Work
5-8-25: Foundation Work Begins
5-12-25: Foundation Footings
5-13-25: Foundation Walls
5-14-25: Continued Foundation Work
5-16-25: Groundwork
5-21-25: Groundwork
5-23-25: Backfill and Groundwork
5-31-25: Pour Concrete Floor
May Baskets For The Elementary School 2025
On April 30th, 2025, PvilleYI put together 500 May Baskets to take to our elementary school. This year our volunteers were the Pleasantville Youth Group! This group meets on Wednesdays during the school year at the Webb Shadle Library. The teens helped us turn 500 cups into baskets and fill them with treats! We then took them over to the school and left a basket on every desk.
This is one of our favorite things to do to bless the younger kids in our community. Thanks to the Pleasantville Youth Group for your help this year!
PROM PREP MORNING 2025
On Saturday, April 26th 2025 PvilleYI hosted our Prom Prep morning. Girls attending Pleasantville’s prom were invited to come in to get their hair and makeup done by one of our talented volunteers or to use supplies provided to do their own. They were welcomed by our team who offered them delicious light snacks and crumbl cookies, ice coffee, and punch. Girls were welcome to stay and enjoy themselves for as long as they liked!
As they left, each girl was given a goody back full of prom day essentials like a compact mirror, lint roller, lip gloss, fun trendy sunglasses, tissues, blister cushions and bandaids, nail files, and more.
As always, our prom prep morning was FREE for all girls!
PHASE ONE OF BUILDING PROJECT SET TO BEGIN APRIL 28, 2025
EXCITING NEWS! Phase 1 of Construction on our Building Project is SCHEDULED TO BEGIN on April 28th! This Phase will start with Demo, which will take approximately one week. The rest of Phase 1 will begin when Demo is complete.
A NOTE FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS: A portion of Jefferson St. will be closed for approximately three months while construction is in progress. Please avoid the areas that are closed off and stay away from the building site during this time. (map below).
To learn more about this building project, go here.
This has been a long process of fundraising and hard work. We are so excited to FINALLY begin building a place to serve our community in so many more ways!
PvilleYI Christmas Dinner
In December 2024 PvilleYI hosted a Christmas Dinner Party for middle school and high school students. Over 80 teens attended the event! We served a Chick-Fil-A meal to each teen, coming to serve them directly at their tables. Dessert and drinks were also served by PvilleYI volunteers. We also passed out a gift to every teen, full of all kinds of fun and trendy items to celebrate them!
A huge thank you goes to our friends at Pleasantville’s St. Paul United Methodist Church for allowing us to use their Family Life Center to host the event.
summer 2024: 27,056 Meals Distributed in Pleasantville
In the summer of 2024, PvilleYI partnered with Knoxville Food Youth Initiative and St. Paul’s United Methodist Church to serve the teens in our community with meals. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from June 3rd to August 2nd, our volunteers worked together to serve an average of 200 bags per day. Each bag contained 4 to 6 meals for each child and teen.
In total, we distributed 5,794 bags.
This means that we distributed 27,056 meals to children and teens in Pleasantville!
We believe the success of the program in Pleasantville is in part due to our efforts to reduce the stigma associated with participating in a food distribution program. Our volunteers go above and beyond to greet children and make sure they feel seen and worthwhile, even if it’s only a brief interaction. We take time to welcome families with a warm smile and a kind greeting.
We are so grateful that we were able to work with KFYI and St. Paul’s UMC to provide this much needed service to our community!
Trick or treat on the square 2024
It’s always a fun night trick or treating in Pleasantville! We again hosted our Trick or Treat on the Square event on Halloween. This event brings community businesses and organizations together to give the kids a night to remember.
Post Game Party 2024
It was a chilly night in Pleasantville for our 2024 Post Game Party! Luckily our volunteers were ready with music, snacks, and several photo opportunities for teens to enjoy together! We love providing a fun and safe space for teens to spend time with each other.
Over 100 teens grades 7-12 attended this year’s event!
Homecoming 2024
One of our favorite weeks of the year: HOMECOMING! We were so excited to participate again in our small town parade and cheer on the Trojans throughout the week!
Middle School Dance Night 2024
We had a BLAST at our Middle School Dance Night 2024!
Over 100 students attended the dance!
Elevate conference
Some of our team was able to attend the Elevate Conference in Minneapolis thanks to our ministry partners at TreeHouse! Thanks to the generous anonymous donors who paid for our hotel accommodations! We learned about trauma informed youth ministry and much more.
Middle School Back to School Night
On August 22nd, 2024, PvilleYI partnered with Pleasantville Middle School to host a welcome back to school event during their back to school night.
We provided refreshments, resources, and gifts for incoming 7th and 8th graders.
Resources included tips on parenting middle schoolers, information on developmental stages, information about local organizations and opportunities, and more.
We also brought in a display of our recommended products for students of this age, based on feedback from families and our own experiences raising teens! (We get no incentive to do this)
Each student received a welcome back from us full of fun items we know middle schoolers love!
We had a great time partnering with the school and welcoming students back to a new year, and we were honored to help ease parents into a new chapter of parenthood as well.
PvilleYI hosts poverty conference in pleasantville
June 5, 2024:
In June 2023, PvilleYI Co-Founders Jennie Koenig and Emily Caulkins attended a Marion County Poverty Conference hosted by The Well, an organization in Marion County that serves those in need. The conference provided PvilleYI with a unique perspective that helped as we served our community members in Pleasantville.
Pleasantville's poverty level is 5% over the state level. In the last 20 years Pleasantville's poverty rate has more than doubled from 7% to 16%. And as of 2020, 25% of those under the poverty level were 6 years of age or younger.
With these statistics in mind, we worked with The Well to bring a Poverty Conference to Pleasantville. We invited leaders from our school, city, churches, and organizations to attend.
On June 5th 2024, our team hosted the Marion County Poverty Conference at Pleasantville’s High School Library. The conference was well-attended with representatives from nearly every church, organization, and leadership team in our community.
Jayson Henry, Well CEO, led the conference. PvilleYI provided a lunch for participants catered by Halftime Bar and Grill.
This conference is part of our effort to make Pleasantville a compassionate and welcoming community for people of all demographics. Thank you to everyone who attended and all those who helped make this possible!
Resources that were passed out at the event were:
A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D
PvilleYI Partners with treehouse
Pleasantville Youth Initiative strives to provide quality programming for teens and their families in Pleasantville. For this reason it is vital that the programs we will implement are evidence and experienced based. We have always had a goal to add mentoring and support groups to our list of offerings to Pleasantville, but we wanted to make sure we were trained to provide these services. This is why PvilleYI is thrilled to announce our partnership with TreeHouse!
What is TreeHouse?
TreeHouse has been serving teens since 1984, helping them build relationships and resiliency rooted in living hope. Based in Minnesota, TreeHouse has sites across the country. Each site hosts programs that give teens a safe space to find support and belonging. Through mentorships, support groups, and other activities, teens have the opportunity to build even deeper relationships with peers and caring adults.
TreeHouse Mission: To End Hopelessness Among Teens.
TreeHouse is more than just a curriculum. It’s a model that is designed to meet the spiritual, social, and emotional needs of teens in every community.
How will this partnership benefit PvilleYI?
Mentoring: Teens can develop deep relationships with mentors as they process life and develop faith. These will be one-on-one mentoring sessions with trained volunteer mentors. All mentors will be background checked and trained by PvilleYI using a proven model and materials provided by TreeHouse.
Support Groups: Students will learn social and emotional skills by processing their week’s emotions together in a faith-neutral environment. These groups will be faith-neutral so that we can connect with students in the school and be a support for them even if they do not share our faith.
Faith-Centered Groups and Events: TreeHouse believes that Christ is the center of the transformation we want to see in every teen’s life. And so do we! Curriculum to offer small group Bible Studies or large group faith focused events is included in our TreeHouse partnership.
Evidence-Based Training and Support
TreeHouse will provide training for PvilleYI’s directors as well as resources for our team to use as we train volunteers, mentors, and work with local partners. This training includes a 12 week cohort for PvilleYI Directors (which we have already started!).
TreeHouse is picky about who they partner with, and so are we! We began the conversation over two years ago and both we and TreeHouse have researched one another in the meantime. Recently PvilleYI met the high standards that organizations that partner with TreeHouse are required to meet.
An important note: PvilleYI is still PvilleYI. We completely keep our identity as an organization in every way. These specific programs will simply be powered by TreeHouse resources and training, which PvilleYI pays for from our budget. Which we are happy to say we can do so thanks to the generosity of donors in our community!
TreeHouse also provides PvilleYI with:
Policy and Organization Guidance
Best Practices Guides and Safety Checklists
Volunteer Training Resources and Guides
Materials and Resources for Mentoring Teens
Materials and Resources for Teen Support Groups
Materials, Resources, and Curriculum for Faith Connection Groups and Events
Materials, Resources, and Curriculum for Specialized Classes (College Readiness, Financial Management, etc)
Continued and Current Training in Specific Areas Impacting Teens
A Coach Assigned Specifically to our Co-Directors for Our Organization’s Unique Needs
Prayer and Accountability Support for our Leadership and Community
The Guidance of An Organization with 40 years Experience
How Soon Will These Programs Be Available?
Our goal is to begin offering one-on-one mentoring and some support groups as early as the fall of 2024. Once our building project is complete, we will be able to expand these offerings even more and offer faith building groups and events, as well as specialized classes, in addition to our current programming.
We are so excited about what we are already learning from a seasoned and solid organization like TreeHouse. We can’t wait to begin mentoring and supporting teens in Pleasantville!
To learn more about TreeHouse, you can can visit their website.
If you have questions for us about this partnership, please reach out to us at jennie@pvilleyi.org
Courtney/Cox/Calhoun Pitch Tournament Donation
PvilleYI received an incredibly generous gift in honor of some wonderful people! The Courtney/Cox/Calhoun Pitch Tournament Committee presented us with a $1000 donation toward our building project. Thank you! To see more about our building project, go here.
May baskets 2024
HAPPY MAY DAY! We dropped off 500 May Baskets at the elementary school on May 1st! Thanks to our helpers, and a special thanks to the Young Adult group at Celebrate Church for volunteering your group time to assemble these with us! Many teachers and parents reached out to share their appreciate for this small act of kindness. We believe infusing even small moments of joy in chidlren’s lives can make a HUGE difference!
Prom Prep morning 2024
We had a fantastic morning spoiling Pleasantville’s prom attendee girls! All young women attending prom were invited to stop by the Memorial Hall to grab an iced coffee or juice, some delicious carbohydrates from Panera Bread, and a goody bag from us! Bags were filled with prom day essentials like lip gloss, gum, bandaids, tissues, hair clips, and more.
Girls were also invited to reserve an appointment to have their hair or makeup done for free by talented volunteers! The spots filled up fast, but we also had volunteers on hand for walk-ins.
We had a great morning encouraging these young women with some pampering and fun!
