All children deserve to grow up in communities that are healthy, vibrant, and filled with opportunity. Our purpose, and our promise, is to make this a reality for every child who lives within the Charleston Promise Neighborhood. Charleston, with an enviable reputation as a center of beauty, history, culture, and wealth, already offers this opportunity to many children, even while a darker reality stunts the futures of thousands of children coming of age in neighborhoods tourists never see. Far too many young people grow up in parts of Charleston in an environment marked by poor education, extreme poverty, and high crime.
Determined to address these inequities, the cities of Charleston and North Charleston, the County of Charleston, and the Charleston County School District have formalized an unprecedented agreement to work together and to partner with local organizations and residents to create the Charleston Promise Neighborhood (CPN). Home to just over 17,000 residents – 4,300 of whom are children under the age of 18 – the CPN is a 5.6 mile area that straddles portions of Charleston and North Charleston, including what is often called “The Neck”. CPN boundaries coincide with the areas served by four elementary schools:
* James Simons Elementary School
* Sanders-Clyde Elementary/Middle School
* Mary Ford Elementary School
* Chicora Elementary School
Through collaboration and partnerships with local governments, businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations, we have the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty within this Neighborhood and, within a single generation, create a community that is socially and economically indistinguishable from the rest of Charleston County. To achieve this, we will partner with organizations already producing strong outcomes to create a seamlessly integrated array of high-quality, cost-effective, services that will “wrap-around” each child in the Neighborhood, prenatal-to-college.
We are now identifying organizations already offering quality services to children, families, or neighborhoods who see the promise in partnering with us in this endeavor.
If this describes your organization, we want to know who you are and what you do. Please complete the following brief survey that will let us identify you.
