Two local foundations have given grant support to SEARCH, Sustaining Essential and Rural Community Healthcare, this spring. After four years as an all-volunteer organization, SEARCH has expanded to become a nonprofit organization with a 13-member board of directors and ambitious goals. A grant from the AMY Wellness Foundation will provide for hiring part-time personnel to handle some basic operations and expand the technology, design, and bookkeeping capacity. SEARCH exists to safeguard and improve healthcare for broad segments of residents, especially those not traditionally at the table. They work across Mitchell and Yancey counties with elected officials, nonprofits, agencies, healthcare providers, and institutions but especially individuals to create a region where people are healthy and thriving. Having some of the central functions done by part-time staff will allow the board and volunteers to concentrate on building a community network with healthcare as the focus.
The grant also allows for the continuation of a flagship program, the Community Engagement Project, which identifies individuals trusted in their communities to speak about the healthcare needs and priorities they see. The project emerges from the belief that local people know their challenges and should be at the center of planning and leading changes that will impact them. Information and ideas garnered in these conversations, including with providers, will be communicated and shared, leading to action. The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the need for trusted means of communication.
The mission of the AMY (Avery, Mitchell, Yancey) Wellness Foundation is to work collaboratively to find preventative, up-stream, and innovative solutions to alleviate health disparities to transform the three-county region.
The Yancey Fund, which is an affiliate of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, also made a grant to SEARCH. Their grant will expand communication efforts around local healthcare, with the focus on Yancey County. SEARCH works to gather and share with the public information that will help them understand and access the diverse health institutions and auxiliary agencies and providers in the region. They are looking at how different segments of the population get their information. In the meantime they use a number of different platforms to get the word out – print media, radio, Facebook (SEARCHwnc), enewsletter, and a website (searchwnc.org). They have also created video and Power Point presentations to be shown to groups when COVID social distancing subsides. They welcome email inquiries at searchwnc@gmail.com. The costs of maintaining and improving these communications tools will be partially covered by The Yancey Fund grant, in keeping with its mission “to inspire philanthropy and strengthen charitable organizations serving Yancey County.”
