Building Engagement for Charleston’s Future
What Helps People Move from Participation to Shared Action?
Charleston Thrives is a community-led effort that brings people together to help shape Charleston’s future, with SonEdna Foundation serving as its backbone supporter.
Meaningful community collaboration takes intentional opportunities for people to understand a shared purpose, build connections, contribute their perspectives, and turn what they learn together into action.
That is where backbone support matters. SonEdna Foundation provides structure, tools, facilitation, and coordination that help create the conditions for community-led work to grow.
Over time, that engagement can deepen.
People become informed about the work and why it matters. They connect with others, exchange perspectives, and recognize where priorities intersect. Then they begin to mobilize around shared priorities by identifying actions, roles, resources, timing, and additional people who should be involved.
That progression is taking shape across Charleston as people become more engaged in the work.
Last week, this column shared how community priorities are becoming plans for 2027. Now, SonEdna Foundation is helping participants deepen that work through facilitated experiences designed to turn participation into meaningful collaboration.
For example, participants are moving among Charleston’s five focus areas to learn what others are working toward, contribute ideas and resources, identify potential partners, and ask questions that can strengthen the work. They are also looking across upcoming activities and priorities to see where efforts connect and where shared resources, relationships, or coordination could help.
As those connections grow, participants are getting more specific about what comes next: the actions needed, who can contribute, what resources or partnerships could help, and who else should be engaged. Each step creates another opportunity to bring knowledge, perspectives, relationships, and participation into the work.
This is how backbone support helps community-led work grow: by creating the structure and opportunities for people to connect what they know and what they can contribute to the priorities Charleston is moving forward together.
If you want to learn more about Charleston Thrives, share a perspective that could inform the work, or explore a way to participate, I hope you will reach out.
If you see progress happening across Charleston, we hope you will share it with me and with each other.
Email cheryl@sonedna.com.
Charleston Thrives is a community-led effort supported by SonEdna Foundation that brings people together to recognize progress already happening across Charleston and carry it forward together. Through shared experiences, conversations and participation, Charleston Thrives helps people see their place in the future of the community and how they can help shape it. Focus areas include Government & Civic Engagement, Education, Economic Opportunity, Health & Well-Being, and Culture & Arts. Follow how Charleston Thrives is Making Progress Together: Facebook.com/sonednafoundation | Instagram.com/sonednafoundation | and at Linkedin.com/company/sonedna-foundation.
