Audio File
Transcript
Hi, my name is Shinora Grayson Johnson. I was born in Charlotte, NC and I moved to the Hill District when I was about 10 years old. I have two brothers, one older, one younger. My dad is a preacher. My mother is a lawyer. I moved to Pittsburgh because my dad got a new church. So the church was called Wesley Center. So we’ve been here since 1999. Whenever he started at Wesley Center, about a year later, there was like 4 boys who would, like, come to the door every time that he was at the church. And so that’s how he started the Center That Cares. The Center That Cares is a nonprofit educational enrichment service, which we are in today. And we’ve been around for 25 years. So I have been in this community for 25 years, working, playing, loving and fellowshipping. In 2010, my brother Jeron passed away. We’re sitting in his Community Center, Jeron Grayson Community Center, and so every day I work to live out his legacy. I am the Chief operating officer at the Center That Cares, and so that encompasses raising money, hiring staff, so human resources, managing all the multiple lines of businesses that we have. I’m also managing real estate fundraising for the new spaces that we’re trying to do. Just, like, trying to, like, bring all the visions to life and just be a foundation for the Hill. When my brother passed away, the amount of people that showed up for us, and the love and the line that was out the door and around the corner, made me feel like the work that my family does is not in vain. I deal with it by just, like, living in his memory every day, knowing that I’m doing this for him. It gives me added purpose. Hearing stories about him from people and how he changed their lives and how he might have went and saw somebody’s grandma in the hospital at 16 years old, like what random 16 year old is going to somebody’s-you know what I’m saying? So it’s like he would do stuff that you wouldn’t even know about because he wasn’t a showy type of person. He would just do what needed to be done. He was a funny class clown, but at the end of the day, like he had a really strong heart. I just want to be able to give a little bit of what he gave. We are going into our 25th year of existence within the Center That Cares and 10 years of actually being in this space. So October 17th, 2024, we will be celebrating 10 years of the Grayson Center being open. So I’ve always been a part where there- it was an after school counselor at Wesley. When I was, you know, when we first opened, I was at high school, so I would walk up the Hill after high school and be a counselor, just like everyone starts off at Wesley. So it’s-it’s fun watching, like the kids’ kids now being program participants and just kind of coming full circle within our 25 years. We now have 5 pillars that we kind of focus on, one being educational, which is the after school enrichment program. We work with the in-house population so that we are able to pay housing for youth 18-24 who are homeless, we’re able to pay their rent for up to two years and provide them some supportive services. Another program that we have is a group violence intervention program where we are like a grassroots organization to help stop gun violence. We have a cafe called Care Community Cafe where we will get our students and the certifications that you need. So you’ll have all your certifications into the restaurant industry. It’s also like a nice community hub for people to have meetings, because right now there’s nowhere to really eat or have a meeting in the Hill District. And then the last one is like workforce development. And so a lot of times some of our old students come looking for jobs looking for additional support. In 2020, we purchased the old Holy Rosary Convent, which has 32 rooms in it for, like, shelter. It has been a nice community asset that we’ve been able to kind of like give back and utilize. We are expanding into two new communities, so we’ll be in Arlington as well as Allegheny Dwellings. And so we’ll be on North side, the South side and in the Hill. I see 5 to 10 years, maybe K-5 having their own space. I see doing some more technology, so that the youth here can have some more hands on experiences with what’s going on in the next generation in terms of like AI and robots and stuff that you’ll need to actually like work, right? So this type of work that you guys are doing now is great because like you can take this and utilize it, and so I just want to make sure that I’m able to help provide experiences that will help the youth that are in the program for years to come.