Born out of a passion for "celebrating life through song and story", native Chattanoogan Tekelia Kelly created Celebrate Chattanooga.com,  a social enterprise project designed to celebrate, educate and communicate about the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee--it's people, places, pleasures and projects.  This social enterprise was implemented in two phases and celebrates Chattanooga while supporting student education.

PHASE I

In Nov. 2014, site host and STEAM Teaching Artist Tekelia Kelly commemorated the 175th Anniversary of Chattanooga with the site's song, stories, shows, shout-outs and special tribute pages.  The debut of new commemorative song, "It's Really Been Nice", aka, "Chattanooga Choo Choo Me Home" made it Chattanooga's newest originally written classic 1940's big band jazz sounding song since Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo Choo".   The website project was under development for over two years and, ironically, launched right in time for Chattanooga's 175th anniversary.  This completed the first phase of the Celebrate Chattanooga  project.

In celebration of Chattanooga's 175th Anniversary, Celebrate Chattanooga invited Chattanoogans to participate in a week-long host of online activities Nov. 8-15.  The activities were designed to celebrate, engage and interact with the community.  Fun snackable content and an immersion of rich, dynamic social media made celebrating Chattanooga "virtually" like having an online party.  The initiative also was connected with  Chattanooga's CHA175.org as one of its community-sourcing events in celebration of the city's 175th Anniversary.

Citizens were welcomed to send shout-outs and share history stories at  www.celebratechattanooga.com, and posts of historic and unique pictures of the city at www.facebook.com/CelebrateChattanooga. Along with celebrating the city's 175th year of incorporation, Celebrate Chattanooga also celebrated its grand opening, with the debut of its new commemorative song--"It's Really Been Nice", also known as "Chattanooga ChooChoo Me Home"  Lyrics of the song spotlight the city, its 175th anniversary and Tekelia Kelly's homecoming back to Chattanooga from Memphis, Tennessee.

As a Special Tribute to the city on November 15, 2014 Celebrate Chattanoga presented a special program and ceremony featuring the Historic St. Elmo Missionary Baptist Church, with Pastor Billy Church, Choir Director Dorothea Johnetta Johnson and Minister of Music Lyndon Carriger.  For over 150 years St. Elmo has served the Chattanooga community with God's love and Word.  The program also featured special guest artists Roland Gresham who is a gospel jazz guitarist and recording artist.

Celebrate Chattanooga is a social enterprise created, owned and hosted by Tekelia Kelly, to celebrate, educate, communicate with and connect the city of Chattanooga.   Celebrate Chattanooga celebrates the people, places, pleasures and projects of Chattanooga, capturing the heartbeat of the city.  For more information and to stay up to date about latest news and happenings, please also explore Celebrate Chattanooga's  Facebook and Twitter pages.

PHASE II

January 2015, the second phase of the project began, with the roll-out of the site's new pages: soundstage, special event, spotlight, store, service and service learning platforms, all for community use. The Service Learning platform would allow students, sponsors and supporters to work together in and for Chattanooga, and strengthen school-to-work success.  Using Celebrate Chattanooga as a "virtual" learning lab, Tekelia Kelly's CHIPS and INTERNCHIPS programs would be integrated into Celebrate Chattanooga, and offer students a real-world "virtual" working environment where they can design, develop deliver and display their work while, supporting their sponsors.

Celebrate Chattanooga's Service Learning platform was designed to help  educate, train and match students with Chattanooga company sponsors.  Through the CHIPS, students would obtain academic knowledge, business etiquette, and information technology skills, while discovering and developing their own unique talents and gifts, interests and skills.  Company sponsors would serve as mentors, allowing students to come and work in career-related areas in internship, job shadowing or co-op positions.

As the Service Learning piece of Celebrate Chattanooga, our mission is to help "inspire and hire" talented high-school students by letting them work on real-world projects that educate and equip them to explore and work in today's job markets. Students are taught core academic and STEAM-based instruction, as well as given state-of-the-art media and technology tools to produce and communicate value-added projects for themselves, such as capstones for schools, as well as projects for their sponsors and the community at large.

Projects benefit both students and sponsors: with students gaining hands-on job experience in a real work settings; and employers building society's  future leaders and employees for the workforce.  Education, economic and community development are also positively impacted and enhanced in the process. Students would ultimately be enabled to learn, grow, and go from school to work more successfully.This is our mission and vision, and what we believe is very much worth celebrating Chattanooga about!  Click here to learn more about Service Learning programs.

Please help us provide technology, teachers, tools, training, time and transportation to help students go from to school to work more successfully!  Make your secure, online, tax deductible donation TODAY! at the following link: Fractured Atlas.

To become a sponsor, mentor, teacher or volunteer, please complete our form at this link: Service Learning