Enlarge Over the last two years, Realtors Care Day has helped 64 families with critical home improvements.

Posted: March 4th, 2011 Lee Howard

With the help of a Foundation For The Carolinas grant, more than 650 local Realtors are expected to participate in the third annual Realtors Care Day project on April 8, making home repairs for about 30 area families.

FFTC recently awarded a $10,000 grant to the Housing Opportunity Foundation, the charitable arm of the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association, to help pay for the project. Part of the housing foundation’s creed is to ensure the Charlotte community offers affordable and safe workforce housing.

“We who are involved in real estate need to give back to the community,” said Realtor Association President Laurie Knudsen, the sales manager at Helen Adams Realty. “And it’s fun.”

Realtors Care Day is an all-day effort to assist homeowners with critical exterior home repairs and the elderly and disabled with adaptive and safety modifications to their homes. Over the last two years, the project has provided an estimated $300,000 worth of assistance to 64 Charlotte-area families.

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Posted: March 3rd, 2011 Lee Howard

PHOTOS BY JASON MICZEK

A few Myers Park-area residents met at their church March 1 to learn a few lessons about taking the time to care.

“There are areas in Charlotte where people are hurting,” said Evelyn Hodges, one of four people who participated in a small group meeting of Charlotte Crossroads’ Get Real 2011 initiative. “Our leadership in Charlotte does not understand all of the people.”

The group met for about two hours at Myers Park United Methodist Church and discussed issues as wide-ranging as poverty, racism, homelessness and the tanking economy. Volunteer moderator John Wood showed two of the Crossroads Charlotte movies: first, "Fortress Charlotte," depicting how an insensitive community pulls itself apart, especially when it turns its back on people in need; the second, "Class Act," depicting a brighter tomorrow, with people celebrating their differences in culture, language and heritage.

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Posted: March 3rd, 2011 Ken Garfield

A shared passion to be of community good in Huntersville has led the Revs. Byron Davis and Mike Moses to forge a bond that has grown now to include their latest campaign.

Exchanging pulpits.

 “Community good” is the phrase Moses uses to explain what drives these two clergy friends to take the gospel of reconciliation where it is needed most: Out of the church and into a world too often divided by race, class and fear. Moses leads the predominantly white Lake Forest Church off Interstate 77 at exit 23. Davis pastors Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist, a largely African American church off Beatties Ford Road. Yet when the two pastors and congregations come together as they often do for worship, service and socializing, division gives way to a zeal to heal the world’s wounds. 

“Heaven,” Davis says, “will not have African Africans or whites. We are brothers in Christ.”

Davis will preach Sunday (March 6) at Lake Forest, planning to deliver a message about the need to put Christ and family first in life. He’s calling it “The Needful Thing.” The Xchange Sermons initiative will see Moses preach at Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist on March 20, echoing the message these two congregations have been putting into practice for several years.

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Posted: March 2nd, 2011 Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman

Not every child grows up with two parents, but you don't need to tell Federico Rios, Joseph Allen or John Kirkpatrick that. They work with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students through an organization called Communities In Schools (CIS), a nonprofit that helps "kids stay in school and prepare for life."

The men each have offices in CMS schools -- Rios at Hidden Valley Elementary, Allen at Druid Hills Elementary and Kirkpatrick at Reid Park Elementary -- and see firsthand how children are affected when one of their parents isn't involved in their lives.

That's why Rios began looking for a way to connect those children with positive male figures, and how he came up with the idea for MENCONNECT, a new CIS program in which men serve as mentors for grade school boys.

"The reason we focus on boys," he said, "is because our boys see women all day." For instance, in his school, there are only seven adult males in the building -- custodians included.

In May 2010, he organized the program's first event: a four-hour session in which one volunteer hung out with 10 students who were allowed to ask the volunteer anything -- and they did. What he didn't want to do was lecture the kids. "We're tired of talking at kids," Rios said, "we want to talk with kids."

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