Featured Organization: Hope to Thrive

Hope to Thrive is a faith-based, non-profit with the goal of ensuring that everyone has proper sustenance and tools to live a full and balanced life. Based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Hope to Thrive offers produce every Tuesday and Thursday at local churches in Winston Salem. This organization inspires hope for individuals, families and communities to thrive in complete health and wellbeing and aims to decrease poverty rates in East Winston.

According to the Economic Innovation Group, Winston-Salem had a city-wide poverty rate of 20.6 percent in 2018, four percentage points higher than its rate in 1980. Hope to Thrive addresses food insecurity, Senior companionship, mental health and other needs of the community by strengthening and coordinating faith networks, food chain pathways, healthcare systems and offering innovative opportunities for positive creativity and transformation. Founder Joy Williams believes Hope to Thrive was a direct result of her parents’ influence when she decided to start Hope to Thrive while in divinity school.

The Hope to Thrive team, consisting of community members who are participants who also want to help others, interns, college students, and individuals who identify with the mission, meet weekly to set goals, such as organizing support groups that emphasize mental health and assisting with check-ins at the food pantry. Team meetings include a variety of training programs for staff, such as trauma-informed care where team members learn how to respond more deeply with empathy and compassion to learned behaviors that are based on trauma and manifest in poor health outcomes in both physical and mental health. For example, during our reflections after the Holistic Produce Pantry we take time to understand what could be going on with someone who takes four stalks of broccoli, instead of judging what seems like hoarding. We know that if someone is experiencing food insecurity there are other insecurities going on as well, and taking four stalks of broccoli could be a coping mechanisms and a way to exercise agency and power of choice. We don’t want to take that away from someone, but we do want healing, which is why we offer free therapy and opportunities to explore our choices with an open heart and open mind. We aim to engage conflict with curiosity, rather than judgement.  Such trainings have been an important part of community building and healing among the team and the people they serve. Hope to Thrive went from feeding 10 families weekly in March 2020 to expanding to 80 families as of March 2021. Most of these are low-income Black and Latinx families based in the East and South Winston area, who also serve as our volunteers and staff.

One of the key partners that helps keep Hope to Thrive’s mission afloat is Grace Presbyterian Church and its Healthy Eating Initiative. The Church in partnership with the Crisis Control Ministry offers emergency assistance to solve financial crises, and places compassion and respect at the center of its work. In addition, the Holistic Produce Pantry through Hope to Thrive is run by volunteers who unload, organize and clean up the event. The food pantry process is environmentally-friendly and sustainable, as volunteers make sure to reduce waste by composting and recycling in the clean-up process. 

As the pandemic hit North Carolina, Winston-Salem residents faced emotional instability and economic loss, making it more likely for people to suffer from mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Hope to Thrive’s key objectives in the face of the pandemic have been improving the housing security of vulnerable populations needing emergency shelter, helping to place residents in jobs, and increasing the cultural engagement opportunities of Winston-Salem’s residents through the arts. Hope to Thrive’s goal throughout the pandemic has been to make people feel secure amidst the uncertainty, by providing food, resources for shelter, and economic recovery through the partnership of churches, The Black Philanthropy Initiative of the Winston Salem Foundation, our partnering restaurants, such as A Taste of Triad, and our community.  During the pandemic, all of our partnerships, play an intricate role in reaching the community. We are hopeful that we can maintain those relationships, including our close community network that has formed due to COVID and rallying together to improve our circumstances. One huge benefit we have seen in the community is the networking that has happened when we allow space for people to build relationships, and to use that as a foundation for our work. We involve the participants in the decision making around the pantry, and bring our problems to them to help solve, such as where to put new sites for the Holistic Produce Pantry, and how to meet the other needs people may have. We have seen at least 100 people get vaccinated because of this community network, at a time when vaccines were not reaching our population.

Throughout much of the pandemic, the country also experienced ongoing protests around systemic anti-Black racism, and a violent fascist coup attempt at the start of 2021. Systemic racism is not new, but there are more conversations happening around dismantling racism at the local, regional and national levels. At Hope to Thrive, we also use the pantry as a gathering space to reflect with our community about these wider issues.  Such conversations help place poverty and food insecurity in the context of a larger system that benefits from people being poor. Some questions that we ask are, “How does someone get poor?” Or “What keeps someone poor?” And larger questions around, “Where did you see God at work today in the pantry?” And other theological and philosophical questions to challenge the mindset that we are not just responding to an immediate need, but we are doing lasting, systemic work as well.

Some challenges Hope to Thrive faces today include connecting with our audiences online, spreading the word about our work, and capacity. At this point, we are an all- volunteer staff, including the Executive Director, but we are getting to a place where we could start paying staff, but it’s a challenge to secure the necessary funding to pay them more than just a few hours per week. We will be starting our 200K campaign, where we are asking 200 thousand people to give $100. We hope that you will join the campaign.

Hope to Thrive is proud to serve its community. It aims to help people thrive despite their circumstances, allowing them to explore their own beliefs, learn from others and engage in their communities. By starting meaningful conversations, this organization creates a safe environment for individuals to participate in dialogue about topics that are hard to discuss and often considered taboo. Filling bellies with healthy food and creating safe space for important public conversations are just a few steps that Hope to Thrive is taking toward community healing.