Metanoia CEO aims to transform neighborhood

The Greek word "metanoia" typically is translated into English as "repentance," but it really means more than that. In Christian thought, it refers to the process of self-transformation.

Metanoia, then, is about changing ways, about finding a better path, one that leads to enlightenment and salvation, for one's self and for others.

This idea, this possibility, is the foundation upon which the Rev. Bill Stanfield lives and works. It provides the name for his community-development corporation. It fuels his faith and inspires his actions. It is expressed by him in many small ways, every day, and in one very significant way that is building his family.

'On the margins'

Stanfield, who grew up in Greensboro, N.C., and his wife, Evelyn Oliveira, a Brazilian-American, began their urban ministry in 2001. They met at the Princeton Theological Seminary. (He graduated in 2000, and she finished in 2001.)

"Right off the bat, we recognized we were not typical middle-class strivers," Stanfield said. They realized that, "God was most alive on the margins of the world."

After seminary, he became a chaplain for a Catholic housing organization in Philadelphia. She went to work at an inner-city private school in Camden, N.J. At the same time, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an organization concerned with social reform and economic improvement, was completing a study of poverty in South Carolina. The study showed that the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood in North Charleston, once a thriving hub of middle-class commerce, had the highest per capita level of child poverty in the state.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship created a program, the Charleston Poverty Initiative, to address problems in the neighborhood. Stanfield and Oliveira applied to run it.

They spent the first year listening and learning, designing the program's goals and methods. They were applying the lessons of John McKnight, director of the community studies program at Northwestern University's Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research.

In his book, "The Careless Society," McKnight argues that social charity as it's most often employed tends to reinforce poverty, not alleviate it, and that intervening in high-poverty areas often backfires because middle-class values are imposed on people struggling with the basics.

His research highlighted what some might consider a counterintuitive corollary: High numbers of social-service providers in poor neighborhoods tended to weaken communities, not strengthen them. They created a welfare mentality rather than perceived opportunity.

What's needed, McKnight writes, is less emergency aid and stopgap intervention and more grass-roots social empowerment.

"The iron rule of community organizing," Stanfield said, "is never do for others what they can do themselves."

An investment

By January 2003, the couple had formed a board of advisers and settled on the name "Metanoia." Before long, the "advisers" became "directors."

Stanfield, who is CEO of Metanoia, said that the chance of success for any proposed initiative depends entirely on whether local stakeholders support it and work actively to achieve its goals. That's why, then and now, the board is consulted about every idea, he said. Five of its nine members live in the Chicora-Cherokee area.

"We're trying to restore a natural economy," Stanfield said. "People get involved in things because they realize they create opportunities for themselves."

In spring 2003, Bill and Evelyn bought a house in the neighborhood. That fall, the Metanoia Young Leaders Program began with 17 students. It's been adding students every year since. There are no breakthroughs; mostly Metanoia is focused on the daily work, on each of the small steps it takes to approach a goal.

Here's the thing: Everyone who participates in Metanoia programming, whether student, intern, staff member, volunteer, board member or parent, is obligated to work on behalf of the community.

Parents of children in the after-school program must contribute at least four hours of their time a month, even if it means sweeping the floor, Stanfield said.

Too often, people in low-income urban areas expect little of themselves and of the wider community, Stanfield said. When help does arrive, it typically comes with a note of admonition. People "expect a lecture about how they're not measuring up," he said.

Then assistance comes with conditions that often perpetuate poverty. To qualify for food stamps, for example, people must demonstrate they earn poverty wages; if they earn slightly more, they risk losing the assistance even if their income is insufficient for providing their families with all the necessities. The current welfare system includes an incentive to stay poor, Stanfield said.

To break this cycle, Metanoia recruits and cultivates young leaders. It's part of what Stanfield calls "asset-based community-building." A neighborhood's assets include, especially, its people, their skills and commitment. So the organization acquires and refurbishes homes using local labor, then provides assistance to buyers. Homeownership increases property values as well as a sense of responsibility.

Stanfield said the real estate initiative, along with a young entrepreneurs program, are part of a new community improvement model: "Give us your leaders so we can train them, reward them and create a real local economy."

Imagine how parents react when someone knocks on their door not with the expected complaint, but with a positive message, Stanfield said, sharing an example of Metanoia's typical refrain:

"Mr. So-and-So, your child was recommended to us by his school because of his leadership skills."

Faith circles

How are leaders cultivated? By instilling in them a sense of self-worth, by inviting them to participate in activities that develop character (honesty and integrity), promote excellence (good work) and encourage confidence (public interaction), Stanfield said.

Metanoia is in the process of defining a set of integrated leadership-development standards for each grade level in each of the three categories just described. These standards will enable staff to measure progress and better adapt curriculum so goals can be better met. The organization is collaborating with the College of Charleston's master's in public education program.

Today, Metanoia's after-school program includes 53 students in grades 1-9. College interns help each day.

A "leadership pipeline" is being formed, Stanfield said.

Charmaine Townsend, 30, has been running the Children's Leadership Development Program for six years. She has a degree in sociology from the University of South Carolina.

For the Christmas and Kwanzaa season, Townsend had the younger children form an imani circle ("imani" is Swahili for "faith"), named for the seventh principle of Kwanzaa. They sang, danced, greeted one another with handshakes and eye contact, prayed, wrote in their journals, did their homework, ate a healthy snack and learned about what leadership means.

All Metanoia parents are invested in Chicora Elementary School. The parents group was defunct, but Stanfield, his wife and their colleagues inspired residents to get involved. Metanoia was instrumental in preventing the Charleston County School Board from shutting down the school in 2004.

In another room of the annex building Metanoia occupies, which is part of the campus of St. Matthew's Baptist Church on Reynolds Avenue, Stacey Brown and David Hutchinson, co-directors of the sixth- through 10th-grade class, talked with students about the meaning of Christmas and the gift-giving tradition. A faith-based organization, Metanoia applies the lessons of the Gospels to everyday life in Chicora-Cherokee.

"Think how (Jesus) was raised," Hutchinson said. "Was Jesus born in a palace? But he didn't allow his humble origins to stop him."

Metanoia has received its share of quiet praise and admiration. In October, the partnership forged between the community-development corporation and the North Charleston Police Department was recognized by the MetLife Foundation and Local Initiatives Support Corp. with a National Community Revitalization Award. Metanoia received a $15,000 grant for its success in creating safe environments. It was one of six honored nationally.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey repeatedly has voiced support for the organization and its accomplishments, especially the creation of affordable housing and, last year, the launch of a farmers market in Chicora-Cherokee.

Summey, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley and other officials are working with Stanfield to land a large federal grant for the establishment of a Lowcountry Children's Zone. It is modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone Project, a large-scale social-service enterprise that addresses child poverty and empowers young people despite economic obstacles.

"There are two kinds of people who like what we do," Stanfield said. "Republicans with heart and Democrats with backbone."

Asked to clarify, he added, "The far left doesn't like the fact that many are left out (of Metanoia's programming); the far right doesn't like the idea of spending money on 'lazy indigents.' "

Taking the initiative

Stanfield and Oliveira, both 36, are taking even more risks with their personal lives. They have just returned from Ethiopia, where they adopted two children. Agegnehu Samuel Oliveira Stanfield is 3, and Kibru Daniel Oliveira Stanfield is 8 months.

The trip required a series of inoculations and much preparation, Stanfield said. The couple worked with a Massachusetts-based adoption agency called Wide Horizons for Children. The process, Stanfield said, "feels right." It's time to start a family.

Just before their 20-hour journey by air to Africa, Stanfield, who is known to work 60-hour weeks, admitted a certain anxiety.

"It's like jumping into a racing car," he said. "It's exciting and scary all at the same time."

A couple of weeks before Christmas and a few days before his trip to Ethiopia, Stanfield went from appointment to appointment, consulting with staff, greeting residents of the neighborhood, showing a reporter two buildings on Reynolds Avenue his organization has acquired, and considering yet another new initiative.

This one would involve Lowcountry Local First, which advocates support for local businesses and farmers. The idea: including food stamp users in local community supported agriculture (CSA) programs.

Stanfield sat down with Lowcountry Local First's Jamie Haley and Elizabeth Beak to figure out whether a share in a CSA program, which can cost about $350 a growing season for a weekly box of produce, was affordable for low-income people, whether it was possible to swipe an EBT card to pay for the goods and whether a centralized pickup location would best serve area customers.

Beak said education -- about nutrition, preparation, recipes and the economics of local commerce -- needed to be part of any new program.

Haley said area farmers markets were asked by the state Department of Agriculture to accept EBT cards as a form of payment, but they refused. Perhaps such payments could work if the produce came directly to Metanoia for pickup.

Stanfield, ever pragmatic, said he liked the idea, then suggested crunching the numbers and reconvening in a few weeks.

Then it was back to the office to join the children in a Kwanzaa celebration and tie up a couple of loose ends before the big trip.

Metanoia will continue to plug away, little by little addressing systemic poverty and helping to improve the community.

But Stanfield and Oliveira now face a sudden and radical change: They have become parents of two children who have never been to America.

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.