Team members, officers, and Dogwood Health Trust CEO Susan Mims recently attended a variety of meetings and celebrations across Western North Carolina discussing hopes, plans, and strategies.

Those activities include:

• CEO Susan Mims attended the first ever Shine on Shiloh: A Walking Tour to benefit the future Shiloh Resource Center. It is a self-guided walk to nine points of interest around the Shiloh Community.

• Health and Wellness team members Margarita Gonzalez and Channah VanRegenmorter met with Executive Director Norma Duran Brown of the Community Health Worker organization Unete, and her team along with Program Director Nelle Gregory of MAHEC. They learned about the work of Unete and received creative ideas for how to shape RFPs in 2023 to increase drivers of health to promote maternal and infant health. Dogwood awarded a grant to support MAHEC’s leadership within the WNC Community Health Worker Initiative, under which Unete is a partner.

• Education team members Victoria Brownlee and Tricia Wilson joined WNCSource for a special celebration unveiling the newly renovated Tebeau Children’s Center. One of Henderson County’s oldest childcare centers, this new facility will provide Head Start, Early Head Start and NC Pre-K education and care for up to 94 children and families. Dogwood awarded WNCSource funds to support the renovation and expansion of the Tebeau Children’s Center to increase the availability of affordable childcare for economically disadvantaged families in Henderson County.

• Officer – Housing Andrew Mayronne met with the Thermal Belt Outreach Ministry to visit Hope Village, a neighborhood of single-family homes on seven acres of Outreach property constructed to provide equitable and affordable rental housing, supportive housing, a foster home and a daycare facility for low-income Polk County residents. Homes in Hope Village were built in partnership with Polk County High School’s construction trades program. Phase I of development includes four homes, and Phase II will create the  infrastructure necessary to construct the foster home and up to eight additional single-family homes and connect the community with trails and park space. In 2021, Dogwood awarded Outreach a grant to support this project.

• Officer – Health & Wellness Channah VanRegenmorter attended the Dogwood-funded Creating a Trauma Resilience WNC conference. There were several hundred attendees from throughout Henderson County representing social service organizations, healthcare providers, the police department, Henderson County Public Schools and Blue Ridge Community College. Pictured, Channah enjoyed the opportunity to connect with several of the conference's speakers and leaders - Executive Director of the Children and Family Resource Center Jamie Wiener, Executive Director of The Free Clinics Judy Long,  Hope Coalition's Dr. Geiser and Crossnore Communities for Children's Tanya Blackford.

• Channah VanRegenmorter, Community Engagement team members Betsey Russell, Eric Holt and Tamia Dame and filmmaker John Kennedy visited Vecinos Executive Director Marianne Martinez at the site of their future community health center in Franklin. Vecinos, which currently operates out of two mobile clinics and a tiny office space on the campus of Western Carolina University, delivers culturally appropriate, outreach-based free healthcare to seasonal and migrant farmworkers and uninsured, low-income communities across eight counties in WNC. With an impact investment from Dogwood, Vecinos purchased a 15,000-square-foot facility and will lease office spaces to their community partners which include Blue Ridge Free Dental Clinic, Pisgah Legal Services, 30th Judicial District Alliance and Centro Comunitario of Macon County. The site is currently slated to undergo a major renovation before opening.

• Health & Wellness team members Channah VanRegenmorter and Margarita Gonzalez met with Executive Director Molly Nicholie and Program Manager David Smiley of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. They discussed their strategic hopes to build a more robust food system in WNC, especially with regard to increasing schools' access to local food. ASAP has had several innovative projects - including their rapid response to supply chain issues caused by the pandemic by connecting local food pantries with farm fresh food that would have gone to waste when restaurants were forced to shut down. To date, Dogwood has provided ASAP with funding across six grants and three leverage fund awards.

• Jill Simmerman of the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) invited Channah VanRegenmorter to participate in the NC Administrative Office of the Court’s presentation on Safe Babies Court Teams to key NC stakeholders in the court systems. Darneshia Allen, Director of Practice and Field Operations at the National Infant-Toddler Court Program, who helped create this evidence-based model, presented this model which has been proven to improve family resiliency and reunification. Channah shared information about Dogwood’s partnership with DHHS and the Administrative Office of the Courts in 2023 to provide funding to support a three-year Safe Babies Court Team pilot serving one of WNC’s judicial court districts and invited interested districts to reach out.
  
  Source: Dogwood Health Trust

Source: Dogwood Health Trust