Making Progress Together Starts with Shared Direction
How is our community leading Charleston toward its future?
For 18 weeks, this column has shared examples of progress taking place across Charleston. Behind those individual stories is something bigger: a community that has come together to define what thriving means, how people want to work together, and where shared effort can make a difference.
Charleston Thrives began with community members helping shape a shared vision: “A thriving and connected community working together to provide opportunities for all.” That vision gives the work a common destination. It reflects not one organization’s idea for Charleston, but an aspiration built by people participating in the community’s future.
The community also defined shared values for how that future should be built: Transformation, Harmony, Rootedness, Innovation, Vision, Empowerment, and Stewardship. Together, these THRIVES values call for courageous progress, trust across differences, respect for Charleston’s roots, creativity, long-term thinking, shared power, and care for people, place, and legacy.
From that shared foundation came five focus areas: Government & Civic Engagement, Education, Economic Opportunity, Health & Well-Being, and Culture & Arts. These are core ingredients of a thriving city, and they are connected. Progress in one can strengthen another, which is why Charleston Thrives creates opportunities for people working across different areas to share knowledge, relationships, resources, and ideas.
This is where shared direction begins to become shared action. Working Groups can pursue priorities within their focus areas while also seeing where their work intersects. Residents and community partners can contribute what they know and connect what they have. New relationships can form. Resources and opportunities can become easier to see. And people can work from a clearer understanding of what Charleston is trying to achieve together.
That is what “Making Progress Together” really means.
A shared vision gives Charleston something to work toward. Shared values guide how people work together. Shared focus areas help direct attention and energy. And when people across the community contribute to those priorities, shared direction can fuel shared results.
The progress shared in this column each week is part of that larger story. Each connection, resource, partnership, idea, and result can help move Charleston closer to the future its community has envisioned.
Making Progress Together is not only about seeing progress. It is about helping create it. Charleston’s future is something the community can continue to shape together.
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.
