04/30/2026
This week, we celebrated our 2026 Meta Data Center Community Action Grant recipients at the Forest City Data Center. It was a joy to bring together this year’s grant recipients, community partners, Meta team members, and local leaders!
Through our Data Center Community Action Grants program, Meta provides funding for nonprofits and schools — addressing critical community needs by putting technology to use for community benefit, enabling people to build strong, sustainable communities, improving local STEAM education — to support the long-term vitality of Cleveland, Henderson, McDowell, Rutherford, and Polk Counties. Learn more on this year’s projects:
Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland County: To inspire environmental stewardship through hands-on gardening projects that apply scientific measurement and engineering to sustainable food production.
Boys & Girls Clubs of Rutherford NC: To establish a technology-rich SmartLab that provides youth with hands-on, project-based experiences in robotics, coding and engineering design.
Cleveland County Arts Council: To transform traditional art spaces into digital arts hubs by providing iPads and interactive displays for advanced AI-integrated art instruction.
East Rutherford Middle School: To integrate entrepreneurship and STEAM skills through a student-led coffee shop utilizing digital marketing, inventory software and 3D-designed branding.
Explore Forest City: To modernize the Forest City Clubhouse with advanced audiovisual technology that enhances public accessibility, visibility and inclusive community programming.
Foothills Community School: To foster student-led scientific exploration and laboratory mastery through participation in regional and state-level Science Olympiad competitions.
Henderson County Education Foundation: To expand equitable access to science kits, robotics competitions, and community field trips for students in underfunded elementary and middle schools.
9496 LYNK Robotics: To provide rural students with professional mentorship and industry-grade fabrication tools that bridge the gap to high-demand engineering careers.
Rutherford Early College High School (REaCH): To launch a centralized AI hub equipped with GPU-accelerated workstations for training machine learning models and analyzing autonomous drone data.
Norris Library Foundation: To eliminate financial and language barriers to science education by providing free community access to telescopes, microscopes and bilingual STEAM kits.
REIGN (Rutherford Education, Innovation & Growth Network): To catalyze a regional AI ecosystem by training instructors, launching literacy workshops and integrating AI readiness into local startup development.
Rutherford County Schools Education Foundation: To accelerate district-wide AI literacy and robotics participation through student-led summer enrichment camps and modernized high school engineering labs.
Rutherford Outdoor Coalition: To empower the next generation of river stewards through hands-on water quality testing and watershed restoration efforts focused on environmental resilience.
Rutherfordton Elementary: To ignite a love for electrical engineering by integrating Snap Circuit kits into hands-on collaborative lessons for students across all primary grade levels.
STEM West: To immerse rural and underserved students in local STEM career pathways through interactive rotations with industry partners and college faculty.
Our thanks to Rutherford County Commissioner Donnie Haulk, Town of Forest City, Town of Spindale, Town of Rutherford, Rutherford County Economic Development, Rutherford Chamber and Rutherford County Schools for joining us.
