Coming Home: Why the Bridge Matters

I have had the privilege of seeing Koinonia Community Solutions from more than one seat. What has stayed with me most is that, through all of the growth and change, KCS has remained grounded in its mission and focused on the people at the heart of it.

I served as a Board member when KCS was just taking shape. Our founder, Bishop Rosie S. O’Neal, envisioned an organization that could help people move forward by connecting them to information and opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach.

Years later, I returned in a very different seat, as Executive Director, with responsibility for helping steward that vision forward.

Much has changed since those early days, but the idea at the heart of KCS has not:

KCS is about people.

It is about helping people move forward by creating access to opportunities where that access did not exist before and, at other times, expanding access so that more people have a meaningful opportunity to succeed.

Those bridges are being built every day.

Every day in our afterschool and summer programs, more than 220 children and their families in Pitt and Martin counties are being served through Kids Excel, Max Factor, and StrongHER. Working in partnership with Pitt County Schools and Martin County Schools, we are able to meet young people where they are and provide academic support, enrichment, mentoring, leadership development, and exposure to new possibilities. Parents and caregivers are strengthened through parent engagement programming and connections to community supports because helping children thrive also means strengthening the families around them.

Our reentry work is particularly meaningful to me.

Reentry matters to the person returning home who is hoping to forge a new path and have a genuine second chance at life. It also matters to the community receiving that person home. Successful reentry contributes to public safety, stronger families and communities, and greater economic participation when people are able to find employment, become more stable, and contribute to the places where they live.

Decades of work as a trial attorney had already shown me how much the community to which someone returns can affect what happens next. The resources available in that community matter. Access to employment, housing, treatment, transportation, and other supports matters. The people willing to open a door and offer a genuine second chance matter as well.

When there was no local reentry council serving the Second Judicial District counties of Beaufort, Hyde, Martin, Tyrrell, and Washington, KCS partnered with Agape Health Services to help create one.

That partnership reflects something that has been essential to the KCS approach. Meaningful community change rarely happens in isolation. Some of our greatest impact has come through strategic collaboration with partners who bring different resources, expertise, relationships, and perspectives to the table. Together, that work has helped make second chances real for more than 155 individuals across those communities.

Sometimes building a bridge means removing a barrier that has been standing in someone's way for years.

Last month alone, through our collaboration with Legal Aid of North Carolina, 32 individuals received expungement assistance at no cost, at a time when access to legal resources for people with limited financial means is increasingly constrained.

Sometimes it means helping someone prepare for the next opportunity.

Just this week, approximately 60 individuals participated in our annual Level Up Career Bootcamp, receiving employment and soft-skills training, practical resources, encouragement, connections, and a meal. Watching that work just a few days ago was another reminder that access and opportunity are not abstract ideas. They become meaningful when people can actually reach them.

New bridges are also being built through our Pitt County Pathways to Opioid Recovery program, where we are working alongside community partners to help individuals overcoming opioid use connect recovery to the practical supports and opportunities necessary to move forward.

Through our housing work, families have moved into stable, affordable homes.