Freedom Bag Food Drive
Through this initiative we provide groceries, PPE, toiletries and educational materials for community members throughout the Tri-County area including historic downtown Charleston and North Charleston
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Contactless Delivery Every 3rd Saturday.
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Upcoming Dates:
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Jun 15th
Jul 20th
Aug 17th
Sept 21st
2024
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
Heritage Interpretation Field School
Our goal is to connect our youth to the field of Heritage Interpretation, train them as Certified Interpretive Guides and educate them on local history by taking them to visit historic sites across the Tri-County area.
Heritage Interpreters connect visitors to natural, cultural, and historical resources at parks, nature centers, historical sites, aquariums, zoos, museums and anywhere that people come to learn about places.
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Charleston, South Carolina is a top tourism destination nationally and globally. Whether they know it or not, most of what tourists love about Charleston is a direct result of African influences because historically "Charleston’s Black population affected almost every aspect of the city’s life.”
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Black owned tour companies make up less than 10% of the industry and there is little consistency in narratives around African contributions to Charleston from one historic site to the next, particularly in spaces where Black interpreters aren’t present. Training in heritage interpretation equips our youth with tools to reclaim how our stories are told and better positions them to access tourism dollars to tackle the well-documented racial disparities we face.
Jobs & Vocational Training
Our goal is to launch a scholarship program to create job training and employment opportunities in vocational and other fields in addition to connecting community members with employment resources and services.
Freedom Food Drive
Our goal is to share 1000 Freedom Bags with our community members this year. We partner with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture to provide Freedom Bags to families in need in Charleston and North Charleston every 3rd Saturday of the month.
Our food drive events are called “Freedom Bag Food Drives” and are community and grant funded initiatives.
Freedom Bags include non-perishable grocery items, fresh organic produce, personal protective equipment and educational material. To help us, click here.
People's Budget
In 2020 we co-founded the Charleston People’s Budget Coalition. We are a united front advocating for an equitable city budget, the elimination of poverty and racial disparities and a redistribution of power in Charleston.
We demand control of how their tax dollars are spent to improve quality of life where we live, by divesting from local law enforcement. We want to help empower our communities to take the lead in advocating for control of their city’s budget and police departments.
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This year the Charleston People’s Budget Coalition will focus on the intersection of housing and the climate crisis and advocate for tenants rights, rental assistance, rent caps and substantive action against the climate catastrophy and environmental racism.
Youth Institute
We aim to develop educational programs for youth that extend beyond the traditional school day/school year through our youth institute.
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Our goal is to offer summer, afterschool and study abroad programming to our youth, where students can receive lessons in coding, graphic design, art, video editing, audio engineering, farming/food justice, cultural and natural history, heritage interpretation and political education.
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The youth institute will take place in a classroom setting and include experiential learning, engaging lessons, field trips, service learning opportunities and hands-on activities that speak to various learning styles. Students will also receive a certification of completion at the end of the course.
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