Over a decade of
community building.
Metanoia cuts the ribbon on the new Youth Entrepreneurship & Volunteer Center on Reynolds Avenue, a spark for the economic revitalization of the Reynolds Avenue Corridor.
Metanoia adopts a 3-year strategic plan that was crafted by 100% community resident input. The plan deepens our existing efforts, expands efforts to organize the adults of the neighborhood and provide them positive links to employment opportunities, grows our operational capacities, and pursues the economic revitalization of the Reynolds Avenue Corridor through means including attracting businesses and investment to the region
Metanoia begins a quality rental program to its housing work, which includes a homeownership incubation component.
Metanoia celebrates its 10-year anniversary at our annual Jubilee celebration.
Metanoia realizes its first class of graduating high school seniors. Two of the graduates had been with Metanoia since 3rd grade, one since 8th grade. All three went on to attend college. Two were the first in their family to do so.
City of North Charleston makes Metanoia stewards of its Owner Occupied Repair program.
Metanoia breaks ground in the renovation/construction of the Youth Entrepreneurship & Volunteer Center
Under the leadership of Clemson Master Gardener and Metanoia homeowner Germaine Jenkins, community residents found the Chicora Place Community Garden.
MWV Specialty Chemicals donates the first $150 000 for the Youth Entrepreneurship & Volunteer Center $500 000 Capital Campaign.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recognizes Metanoia as a national best practice in a speech to a Washington DC Community Development Conference: “Metanoia has visibly improved the hardest hit communities [in North Charleston].”
Metanoia completes partnership with College of Charleston’s Master of Public Administration Progrm to establish our Integrated Leadership Development Standards.
Metanoia leverages a $140 000 grant from the Sc Department of Commerce to help construct the Zucker Family Production Kitchen at the Lowcountry Food Bank; the facility provides job training in the culinary arts for local students.
Metanoia and North Charleston Police Department win one of six national MetLife Foundation awards for community-police partnerships, recognizing that on one street where Metanoia redeveloped six homes, the violent crime rte dropped 64% and overall violent crime in the neighborhood went down by 23%.
Metanoia recognized as one of ten “2009 Angels (non-profits offering exemplary programming with low overhead costs)” in South Carolina by SC Secretary of State.
Metanoia students in the Civic Leaders program begin two small businesses: Isoke Sisters Jewelry and Hodari Brothers Screen Printing. This allows students a modest income while saving for college and learning essential job skills.
Metanoia leverages $20 000 grant from SC Department of Commerce to being the HUB Minority Contractor academy, graduating over sixty small contractors with better business skills.
Responding to recent pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents, Metanoia Freedom School students successfully campaign to lower speed limits throughout the community, put more stop signs around the school and more traffic enforcement through the neighborhood.
Metanoia hosts its first Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School to teach community students a love for reading, social action and academics for 5 weeks during the summer.
Metanoia partners with SC Housing Finance and Development Authority to begin an Owner Occupied Repair program to repair homes for low-income homeowners in our community.
Metanoia completes renovation and sale of its first 2 homes in Chicora/Cherokee.
Metanoia leads a successful campaign to keep Chicora Elementary School open and located in the community. Victory will ultimately lead to construction of a new Elementary School in our neighborhood in 2014.
Metanoia receives 501(c)(3) non-profit status from IRS. Receives first grant, funding for the Young Leaders program from WC English Foundation. Metanoia begins an affordable, quality housing component to its work.
Metanoia builds a partnership with St. Matthew Baptist Church, moves its offices into the church and starts the Young Leaders- a daily after-school program for 17 students grades 1-4 who are identified as showing leadership potential.
CBF begins the “Charleston Poverty Initiative” by hiring married Urban Ministers Bill Stanfield and Evelyn Oliveira to spend a year of listening in North Charleston neighborhoods, with the goal of allowing the community to guide them in forming a ministry to affect child poverty. Within 6 months, the couple buys a home in the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood, joins St. Matthew Baptist Church and begins to focus on the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood.
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina performs demographic study, finding the neighborhood Metanoia is now located had the highest concentration of childhood poverty in the state.