The Columbia Council of Neighborhoods met Thursday, September 24. All four of the Community Development liaisons spoke on programs designed to get residents involved with their communities.

Gerry Lynn Hall talked about a program called Map Your Neighborhood. The program is targeting neighborhoods and their readiness for any kind of disaster. According to Chris Perez, the citizen preparedness coordinator with SLED, less than one in every 10 people are minimally prepared for a disaster. Living in South Carolina, residents are susceptible to a number of potential disasters including hurricanes, wildfires, and pandemic flu. Map Your Neighborhood is supposed to help neighborhoods become more prepared. Perez has packets, which are available by contacting Perez at cperez@sled.sc.gov, to help communities with the Map Your Neighborhood program. Inside the packet are handouts with guidelines to neighborhood mapping and nine steps that citizens should follow immediately following a disaster. There are also DVDs in the packet to train the residents of a community. SLED can train residents as well.

Charmaine Clark is working on a program called Parent Success Program. This program targets single parents or expectant parents between the ages of 17–25. The program isn’t solely targeted to mothers, but fathers as well. The Parent Success Program educates the participants in areas such as earning your GED, nursing, business, or trade. Career guidance and planning as well as job placement assistance is also part of the program. If interested, contact Charmaine Clark at 545-3373 or cdclark @columbiasc.net.

Jeff Rainwater has a program called Columbia Youth Works for teenagers ranging from 16–19 years of age. Columbia Youth Works allows the teenagers the opportunity to repair homes in their communities. The goal for the program is for the teenagers to feel a sense of pride in the work they do as well as for their communities. If interested contact Jeff Rainwater at JLRainwater@columbiasc. net.

The next CCN meeting will be on Thursday October 22 at 5:30 pm.