Brittany Counts on Working at Metanoia

AH: You said that you work as a counselor for eighth grade girls, what school do you work with?

BC: I work with, my program is not housed in a specific school. I have girls who attend Morningside Middle School in North Charleston; Military Magnet in North Charleston, and yeah, those are my two schools, they all stem from Chicora Elementary and our program is there because the Chicora-Cherokee area of Charleston is the poorest sector of Charleston and these kids had nowhere to go during the hours that were most dangerous for them, which would be between 2pm and 6pm, which are the functioning hours of our program. It is during these hours that kids, teenagers, seem to make the choice as to whether go home and do homework or to go stand on the walk with your friend who is selling drugs or to could be forced into robbery or things like that. And so we take them and we give them a safe haven, a lot of them do not constant people in their lives, people who they can depend on, they have people just come through and say that that they are going to be there and before they know it they are gone again. So we teach them skills that need to make it past all of the statistics that say they are going to in Chicora-Cherokee doing the same things that their parents do and that is as far as it goes. We teach them entrepreneurship, and character, we develop their character, we teach them how to deal with their emotions and our program runs from first grade through high school and I work on the high school program. And we are the only program in South Carolina, who has a program for high school students because they tend to be very different because they are growing up, they are defining themselves and that can often lead to attitudes and rebellions when you tell them to do certain things, but we work hard and we let our students know that if they need anything they can come to us.

AH: And so the funding for that program comes through the state or private funds?

BC: We are a non-profit so all of our funds are donated, we have fundraising activities, we have people who are annual donors and then we have the donors who if we need anything we can call them and it is just like they snap their fingers and it is done, but and we host, our biggest fundraising event is Jubilee, which takes place in December and its’ where we showcase what the kids have been working on and our high schoolers have two business, the boys work on the Hodari Brothers [Screen Printing Co.] screen printing and they make mugs and T-shirts for local community organizations and businesses and the girls have a business called the Isoke Sisters [Jewelry] and they make jewelry and they showed off, they showcased the jewelry, they sell the T-shirts and it just a chance for the donors to come together and they can donate money, they can meet the students, they can see what we have been working on, the progresses that we make here and where we are aiming to go in the future.

AH: That is great, how long have you been involved with that?

BC: I am a Bonner Leader and as a Bonner Leader I am committed to serving at least 300 hours of community service a year and Metanoia, which is the name of the program is my work site through my program, through Bonner. It also qualifies for my federal work-study, so I often refer to it as my job as opposed to my work site.

BC: I have been, my first year I worked with sixth grade girls and I am into my second year now, where I moved up to seventh grade and I also have eighth grade students as well.