Editor's note: Today, The Daily Advance publishes its annual Progress & Review edition. This year, the edition takes a look at different segments of our community that work together toward a common goal. The story below is a sample of the type of stories contained inside this special edition.

Six years ago, as the number of school shootings had begun rising across America and Columbine was an unknown suburb in Colorado, a group of Perquimans ministers started meeting to discuss the future of the county schools.

As Saunders Grove Missionary Baptist Church pastor Landon Mason recalls it, the ministers talked about a host of issues and formed a wide agenda. Their wish list ranged from getting school officials to permit churches to host baccalaureate services for graduating seniors, to having more of a voice in the succession process should the school superintendent leave and a new one be sought.

The ministers' main goal, however, was to come up with a way to translate the great influence they hold in the community outside of school into influence within the schools.

“We didn't want to come in and try to tell (school officials) how to teach," Mason says. “We just wanted to come in with our service to do what we could to help. We just wanted to make a difference.”

The ministers felt if they could just get themselves on campus — volunteer to walk the halls between class changes, help monitor the cafeteria during lunch periods, listen to younger students read — they could have impact on the lives of the young people there, and in the process make the schools a safer place for students to learn.

They pitched their ideas to then-Superintendent Randall Henion and to their relief, he agreed to their proposal. The result was the formation of the Ministers Council on Education, a unique partnership between churches and schools that is believed to be the only one of its kind in the state.

Today, some 20 congregations across Perquimans are represented on the Ministers Council, and according to school district spokeswoman Brenda Lassiter, the program operates as a go-to, do-it-all “community resource" for the schools.

"Wherever we have a need, they try to fill it," Lassiter said.

For example, when a school counselor recently learned that a family in the community with school-age children was homeless, he contacted the Ministers Council. By the end of the day, not only had a pastor in the group agreed to house the family for two weeks, he also had arranged to find them permanent housing through the local public housing authority.

In another recent case, a disabled student at the high school was having difficulty maneuvering the hallways. As soon as the Ministers Council was alerted, the group was able to locate an unused wheelchair that the student now uses to get around.

The group also helped start a “clothes closet” at Central School in Winfall several years ago. The closet provides a change of undergarments and other clothing to young children when they have accidents at school, allowing them to remain at school and not have to be picked up by their parents and taken home.

Last year, member churches of the Ministers Council also raised more than $1,000 to help high school students take the Scholastic Aptitude Test and other college entrance exams as well as pay for college application fees. School officials say the money helped 15 students apply for college who otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

John Wells, a guidance counselor at Perquimans County High School, said the Ministers Council has made his job a lot easier. Before the SAT fund, he says he had to "beg, borrow and plead" to find funds to help students pay for the college entrance exams.

"We're living in one of the poorest counties in the state, so our kids sometimes don't even have money for the stamp to mail off their college application," he said. "Because of the Ministers Council, we're now able to help them."

But while its reach has been great, the Ministers Council's largest impact has been small. Perquimans Schools Superintendent Ken Wells in fact believes the group's greatest contribution has been what it's done to help individual students.

"If it means interacting with a child at school one-on-one or working with that child's family to take care of some situation outside of school — whatever it takes to help that child be successful, they're willing to do," Wells said.

Mason, who when he's not pastoring at Saunders Grove manages the family resource component of the Economic Improvement Council's Head Start program, recounts how he recently intervened in a situation where a parent was having trouble getting her child to attend school.

“The mother was having trouble getting the child to get up and go to school, so I went by their house, got the kid up, took him by Popeye's, got him a biscuit and took him to school. There hasn't been any problem since," Mason said.

“Those are the kinds of things we can do because of the influence that we carry in the community," Mason continued. “God has given the minister favor with his people ... (and) favor allows you entrance in areas that you normally wouldn't have.”

The ministers' influence has also been key, Perquimans school officials say, in helping mobilize others to become involved in the schools.