APFH History...and why we're here

 A Place for Hope's mission is one of helping everyone find their voices by learning to love, and loving to learn.

The Blackmon Road Community, 'just this side' of Rock Hill, SC, is one of the poorest communities in South Carolina. Through no fault of their own except, perhaps, that they were born poor, many of the residents of the Blackmon Road Community continue to live in third world conditions. They live without indoor plumbing, bathrooms or showers, without trash pick-up, without paved roads, and without street lights – effectively, without the basic material necessities we have come to expect in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

For years the Blackmon Road community (some still refer to it from its late 40's-50's moniker "Trash Pile Road") has been on the border between the city of Rock Hill and York County, invisible and ignored...and less than a mile away from the center of a growing and bountiful city, teeming with resources. The year is 2011...nearly ten (10) years since our mission had begun, and yet...there are homes and dwellings that remain in need of urgent, basic human services.

In terms of access to water and sewer infrastructure, healthcare, and basic human services, the Blackmon Road Community has been designated by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control as being the "most severely underserved community in the entire state".

We find this situation to be fraught with a myriad of complex issues, too broad in scope and too many, to try and address them all on this page.  We are shamed in this, the land of opportunity and hope, as we see our fellow Americans...our sisters and our brothers and their children and grand-folk living in the searing pain and uncertainty that the life of generational poverty brings with it. There are  infants, school-aged children and teens who live in the Blackmon Road Community, and the dozens of children of extended families who, more often than not, spend their days and nights in the care of the adult family members living in the community.

These children are part of a cycle of poverty that we have the capacity to interrupt and change, by offering support and access to basic social services. They need the kinds of structural support, educational programming, and psychological increase in the spiritual, political, social, and economic strength of individuals and communities. It involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capacities. that will provide them with the self-esteem and community-building activities to truly believe that their lives can be different, that they can be anything they want to be in this world through commitment, hard work, dedication, and an equal opportunity to pursue their dreams.

And, we need your help.