As Metanoia grows, we continue to place a strong emphasis on doing work “with” residents and not “to” or “for” them. We see each scholar, family, resident, homeowner, and leader as essential partners in creating a healthy community. Everyone is critical to success. To this day, many of our Board of Directors and employees live in the neighborhoods we work alongside.
Our Story
In 2002, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina (CBFSC) desired to invest in transformative efforts to address childhood poverty within the state. CBFSC’s coalition of churches hired Urban Ministers Evelyn Oliveira and Bill Stanfield to spend a year listening to residents and leaders within South Carolina’s North Charleston neighborhoods with the highest concentration of childhood poverty (per 2000 US Census).
Collectively, CBFSC decided to focus its efforts on Chicora-Cherokee in North Charleston, a small community of under 3,000 people. To Evelyn and Bill, Chicora-Cherokee was, most importantly, a vibrant place, resilient, and fundamentally strong. Many residents and families had lived in the neighborhoods for generations and aspired to continue to build the community for future generations.
Metanoia was born out of this year of listening and maintains to this day a deep commitment to listening to neighborhood residents and families, who hold the true expertise about community challenges, aspirations, and solutions.
A core group of local leaders organized to form Metanoia’s Board of Directors and built a partnership with St. Matthew Baptist Church. Metanoia’s first initiative, a small afterschool enrichment program for 1st through 4th grade students of Chicora Elementary, launched in the Fall of 2003. Since that time, Metanoia’s initiative to build leaders has grown into a holistic community development effort that works year-round with students from 1st through 12th grades.
As Metanoia centered on authentic relationships with students and families, the organization discovered the broader range of challenges children and families faced daily. As a result, Metanoia developed partnerships around new initiatives to encourage and sustain community vibrancy through quality housing and economic opportunities.