Madison Hurst \u201921 is carrying on her family tradition: helping those in need.<\/p>\n
It was her grandparents\u2019 assistance to incarcerated people that inspired Hurst\u2019s interest in the Soteria Community Development Corporation. She volunteered for the organization for her sophomore project through the Shucker Leadership Institute and wrote grants that generated more than $130,000 for Soteria.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the grants was to fund salaries for a chief operating officer and a woodshop foreman. While a COO is vital for the day-to-day operations, such as managing transitional housing for men returning to society or for low-income families, the woodshop foreman will oversee \u201cSoteria at Work,\u201d the organization\u2019s job-training program, in which men deconstruct old buildings and use the wood to build tables, doors, clocks and other products. The goal is to make the transition process easier for men returning to society and seeking a job.<\/p>\n
To date, Hurst has raised $132,500 in grant money from The Jolley Foundation, Sisters of Charity and The Daniel Mickel Foundation.<\/p>\n
Hurst, along with five other second-year Shucker Fellows, worked to push forward the mission of Soteria, which provides \u201clow-income families with resources and training to help them reach a place of self-sufficiency.\u201d Each year, second-year students in the Shucker Leadership Institute partner with a community organization with the goal of effecting lasting change.<\/p>\n
Soteria\u2019s programs get results. Only four percent of men who participated in Soteria\u2019s programs in the past five years returned to prison, compared to the 23.7 percent overall rate recorded by the South Carolina Department of Corrections.<\/p>\n
While Madison\u2019s academic interests lie in the medical field, growing up in her grandfather\u2019s church gave her a \u201cheartfelt passion\u201d for people returning to society from prison. Her grandfather ministered numerous people in prison who then joined his church after their release. This, along with learning about her grandmother\u2019s work counseling pregnant women in prison, drew Hurst to Soteria.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Jerry Blassingame, the organizations\u2019 executive director, is ramping up his advocacy work: pushing for legislation, raising awareness of Soteria\u2019s work and fundraising for supplies and operations.<\/p>\n
But Blassingame and Soteria need more staff members, and that\u2019s where Madison\u2019s grant-writing work will help.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I learned a lot more about a population that I don\u2019t really interact with. I don\u2019t think I fully understood the scope of how much (Soteria) really impacts one person\u2019s life, but also the family, the community and the society in general,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hurst also learned how to communicate with people with different life experiences, deepening her commitment to Soteria\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of people, when they hear what I\u2019m doing, they\u2019re kind of confused. Why would I want to help these people that made these decisions? Well, if people judged me on my worst mistakes, I would never be where I am,\u201d she said. \u201cI just didn\u2019t make a mistake that was illegal. I think that people really need to be more sympathetic in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of the school year, Madison got to celebrate with the people who inspired her to serve at Soteria in the first place \u2014 her grandparents.\u00a0When they visited Furman, she brought them to Soteria to show them all the work that the organization does and introduced them to Jerry Blassingame, who now has a strong foundation of resources to better serve the men in his programs.<\/p>\n
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Madison Hurst \u201921 is carrying on her family tradition: helping those in need. It was her grandparents\u2019 assistance to incarcerated people that inspired Hurst\u2019s interest in the Soteria Community Development […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,68,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative","category-shucker-leadership-institute","category-top-four-news-3rd-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}