Bringing More Support Within Reach for Charleston Families
How Can Working Together Turn a Shared Priority into Community Action?
Healthy families are part of a thriving Charleston. But supporting families can mean addressing more than one need at a time. Families may need access to health resources, early learning, essential items, trusted information, and people and organizations that can help.
Those interconnected needs are part of what Charleston Thrives Working Group members are learning about and acting on together. Through the Working Groups, people with different expertise and community relationships can share what they know, recognize where priorities intersect, and find opportunities to better align their efforts.
On Sept. 22, some of those connections were visible at the Healthy Moms, Happy Families Maternal & Child Health Event at the James C. Kennedy Wellness Center. Dr. Catherine Moring, executive director of the Wellness Center, and Shirley Williams, a community health worker and doula with Tougaloo College Delta Health Partners, are members of the Health & Well-Being Working Group. Angie Cossar, executive director of the Meek Foundation, and Amy Donaldson, director of Early Learning for Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance (TELA), are members of the Culture & Arts Working Group.
Together, they helped create an opportunity for expecting and new mothers, parents, caregivers and families with young children to find several kinds of support in one place. Families could receive free health screenings, learn about local health and family-support programs, find maternity and children’s clothing and baby supplies, access educational resources, and connect directly with organizations supporting maternal and child health.
That matters because community resources are most useful when people can find and access them. Bringing different kinds of support together can make it easier for families to learn what is available, meet people who can help, and leave with information or resources they can use. It also shows the value of people working across different areas of community life around a shared priority.
The opportunity to support Charleston families continues. Community members can donate clean, gently used children’s clothing, shoes, jackets and coats, baby blankets, and maternity clothing at the James C. Kennedy Wellness Center. Donations may be dropped off Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. or Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon.
This is what Making Progress Together can look like: people bringing different knowledge, relationships, and resources to a shared community priority and turning those connections into action that can benefit Charleston families.
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.
