Kinston Promise Neighborhood brings organizations together to serve youths

Even without full grant funding, the leaders of the Kinston Promise Neighborhood program are forging ahead with their effort to bring together the multiple community groups that serve local youth and provide “cradle-through-college-to-career” support to the city’s children.

The Kinston Promise Neighborhood — an effort of the Partnership for Children of Lenoir and Greene Counties and the Project Promise Mentoring Alliance — was formed last year after its founders learned about the Promise Neighborhoods concept through the UNC Community-Campus Partnership, which is supporting community programs in Lenoir County.

“We decided we would be a Promise Neighborhood with or without the grant funding,” Project Coordinator Theresa Williams Bethea told a group of representatives of Kinston’s government, business, nonprofit, education, health and faith sectors gathered Thursday in Rochelle Middle School’s media center.

The U.S. Department of Education provides one-year grants to local organizations that want to establish a Promise Neighborhood.

The program is designed to “significantly improve the educational and developmental outcomes of children and youth in our most distressed communities,” the Department of Education’s web site states.

In Kinston, the Promise Neighborhood program will focus on youths in an 81-block area of East Kinston, and the Mitchelltown neighborhood. Children who attend public and charter schools in those neighborhoods will receive services.

Although federal funding is not currently available, the Partnership for Children and the Project Promise Mentoring Alliance received funds from the N.C. Committee on Dropout Prevention, and that money will support the Kinston Promise Neighborhood.

Bethea is working as coordinator on a volunteer basis.

“Collaboration is the way to go if you want to make a difference in this community,” she said.

Representatives of the various partner organizations talked Thursday about what their respective groups do and pledged their support to Kinston Promise Neighborhood.

Molly Taylor, community outreach coordinator for the Partnership for Children, discussed the state-supported early childhood programs the Partnership runs, such as More at Four, Three School and Parents as Teachers.

“We always have more (children) than we’re able to serve in a given year. … Early childhood is so beneficial to the way people live right here in your community,” Taylor said.

Jaylin Fulton, a rising seventh grader at Rochelle, talked about his involvement in the little-by-little program, and a recent trip they took to learn about colleges.

“(I learned) about how it doesn’t matter where you grew up as long as you have goals for the future,” he said.

Kendra Davenport Cotton said the UNC Community-Campus Partnership provides the “intellectual capacity” of Carolina faculty members and graduate students to support local initiatives in Lenoir County — the Partnership is also working with groups in Caswell County.

“This process is only going to be as successful as the people in this room make it,” said Cotton, a Partnership project director.

Promise Neighborhood leaders described their program as creating an “oasis” of support for children, a concept Luis Guzman of La Voz ENC picked up on.

“We’re looking forward to a better future, and we’re all in the same hole, sharing the same water because we’re in the middle of a desert,” he said.

David Anderson can be reached at 252-559-1077 or danderson@freedomenc.com.

BREAKOUT BOX 1:

Lenoir Co. high school dropout rate: 3.87 percent (2009-2010 school year)

Teen pregnancies: 144 (2009)

Homicides: Five (2011)

BREAKOUT BOX 2:

For more information on Kinston Promise Neighborhood, or to contribute or volunteer, call 252-522-8019 or visit kinstonpromise.org.