Community Vision: Learning, Wellbeing, and the Work We Do Together

“We want to do more than survive. We want to live, to learn, to build.”

— Salem Gardens resident

How our vision was built

We listened first. This community vision was synthesized by reviewing reports, research, and organizing documents from across Forsyth County—community listening sessions, parent-led studies, education data and policy analyses, neighborhood action plans, and program evaluations. From these sources—and the voices within them—we pulled through the themes, hopes, and concrete calls to action that align our community’s work. Our sources are listed at the bottom of the page.

What our community is saying

Across neighborhoods, families, educators, and advocates are describing the same horizon: every child surrounded by caring adults; every family with what they need to thrive; every school a place of belonging, rigor, and justice. The through‑lines are clear:

Learning starts at home and in community.

Families, churches, recreation centers, and trusted programs like Head Start, Imprints Cares, YMCA, and Freedom Schools are anchors of early literacy and school readiness. Access often breaks not because programs don’t exist, but because of barriers to awareness, time, transportation, language, and trust.

Belonging and affirmation come first.

Parents want classrooms that reflect children’s cultures and communities and teachers who know each child deeply. As one parent put it, “You never want a child to feel like an outsider when they’re trying to learn.”

Discipline is shifting—and equity is the measure.

Fewer suspensions and serious incidents are encouraging, especially stronger protections for young learners. Yet racial disparities persist, with Black boys still most impacted. These outcomes reflect adult behaviors and systems—not children’s. Our work focuses on transforming the structures and practices that shape those adult decisions, advancing restorative, supportive approaches that keep students engaged, learning, and connected to their schools.

Healing and learning are inseparable.

From Black maternal health to trauma in Latine communities, people are calling for systems that are culturally responsive, trauma‑informed, and rooted in dignity—because wellbeing is the foundation for attention, attendance, and achievement.

Place matters.

Neighborhoods like East Winston and Salem Gardens are naming safe housing, transportation, childcare, and dignified work as education issues. When residents lead, systems change moves from charity to collaboration and accountability.

Joy as a strategy for healing and thriving.

Communities are reclaiming joy as power—centering Black and Latine voices to build spaces of celebration, connection, and belonging where everyone can heal and thrive.

“The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.”

— James Baldwin

Highlights of what we are building together

Forsyth Family Power exists to support and align the tremendous work already happening across our community—to connect the dots between learning and living, classrooms and care, opportunity and accountability. The efforts emerging now are early examples of what this alignment can look like in practice—a starting point for deeper, more coordinated action built at the speed of trust and rooted in shared accountability and care.

Early learning that is universal, affirming, and workable for families.

Through community-based participatory research led by Forsyth Family Power, in partnership with the Peoples’ Research Council, parent researchers gathered insights directly from Black and Latine families about what they need from Pre-K. Parents called for early learning that is universal, affirming, and workable—full-day Pre-K with transportation, simple enrollment, and caring, well-paid educators who reflect the diversity of their students. They wanted identity-affirming classrooms, teachers who know each child’s interests and build confidence from day one, and systems that foster trusting relationships between families and educators while ensuring equitable access for every four-year-old.

The ARPA Pre-K Pilot and Equity Action Plan, aligned through the Pre-K Priority, transformed these recommendations into real action. Funding supported 30 model classrooms across Forsyth County, providing salary parity, retention bonuses, coaching, and professional development for teachers. Family engagement specialists and translation services simplified and expanded enrollment access.

Classrooms received culturally representative materials, and coaching emphasized relationship-based teaching and social-emotional learning. The Equity Action Plan offered tools and guidance to track representation, build trust with families, and strengthen instructional quality—directly connecting parent priorities with measurable progress toward equitable, high-quality Pre-K for every child.

Birthing justice that is trusted, continuous, and grounded in community.

Through community-led research—the State of Black Maternal Care in Forsyth County (Feb 2025)—Black mothers named what’s missing and what works. Trust is fragile: only 43% reported “very trusting” relationships with providers, and most weren’t offered midwifery or doula care (69%). Many felt sidelined in decisions, and nearly half weren’t offered childbirth or parenting classes. Mothers asked for continuity of care, shared decision-making, mental-health support without fear or stigma, and normalized access to doulas and midwives as part of standard care.

Those priorities are moving into action. The By Mothers research team is taking findings to national audiences, including the 2nd and 3rd Annual Black Peal Society Black Maternal Health Conference, to build partnerships and momentum. Locally, community advocates are collaborating with Atrium around a vision to increase access to doulas—advancing policy that recognizes doulas as part of the birth team (not visitors), to create a clear credentialing pathway, and enable continuous, badge-enabled access across Labor & Delivery, Operating Rooms, Post-Anesthesia Care Units (PACU), postpartum, and neonatal intensive care units (NICU). 

Next, the By Mothers network is working on an emerging partnership with Wake Forest University’s Deacon Doulas program to embed our research around equitable maternal health care into the foundations and focus of their programs through an intentional advisory role for the program.

We Heal Together: Building trauma-informed systems of safety and belonging

In East Winston-Salem, neighbors, organizers, and youth-serving partners are re-imagining what community safety and healing can look like. We Heal Together is an early pilot of the People’s Research Council—a partnership among Action4Equity, Crossnore Communities for Children, and Forsyth Futures—funded through a four-year, $4 million federal award from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) under the Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma (ReCAST) program. The initiative focuses on six census tracts in East Winston, where 17,000 residents—predominantly Black and Latine families—are working together to strengthen local systems of care.

Through the Center for Trauma Resilient Communities (CTRC), more than 470 participants across schools, nonprofits, and youth-serving agencies have completed trauma-informed care trainings—learning to recognize the effects of adversity, embed resilience practices, and respond with empathy rather than punishment . These sessions build a common language around safety, emotions, loss, and future (the S.E.L.F. Framework) and equip frontline staff, educators, and first responders to shift everyday interactions from reactive to restorative.

On the ground, Full Circle Mentoring, led by Shantae Graham, has connected 101 East Winston youth and families to mentoring, tutoring, and mental-health resources—exceeding its first-year goals. Parents report stronger access to school supports, extracurricular opportunities, and trusted adults their children can turn to. Five mentors have now earned national violence-prevention certification, expanding culturally grounded peer support networks.

Together, these efforts form the start of a neighborhood-wide healing ecosystem—one that replaces isolation and punishment with connection, advocacy, and collective care.

Winston-Salem Freedom Schools: Learning as Liberation

“We have the brain. We have the mind. We’re smart, we’re strong, and we can do anything. We learned it in Freedom School.”

— Camren, Freedom School Scholar

The Winston-Salem Freedom Schools movement proves that when education affirms identity and agency, children rise. Each summer, scholars spend three hours a day immersed in culturally relevant literacy, reading an average of 12 books and taking home thousands more to sustain their learning. The results are transformative: 84% of scholars maintain or improve their reading levels, and those who begin below grade level gain an average of 1.2 years in reading skills—reversing the summer learning loss that drives two-thirds of the reading achievement gap nationwide.

Freedom Schools nurture the whole child—intellectually, socially, and emotionally. Scholars show measurable growth in confidence, empathy, and teamwork while learning that their voices matter. Each July, they lead the National Day of Social Action, putting lessons of literacy and justice into practice.

The vision is clear: education as liberation. Freedom Schools show Forsyth County that when children are seen, supported, and connected to their culture, they don’t just read better—they believe in their power to change the world.

Schools as Hubs for Family Prosperity: The Ashley Example

The story of Ashley Elementary in Winston-Salem shows what’s possible when a community insists on equity and refuses to wait. For years, families and educators at the predominantly Black and brown school demanded a safe, high-quality learning environment after decades of neglect. Their advocacy, organized through Action4Equity’s #Action4Ashley campaign, led to the Ashley Community DREAM Report, which captured local priorities—culturally affirming teaching, diverse staff, family engagement, and equitable resources. The district adopted these findings to guide the new school’s design.

In 2024, the Board of Education approved $46 million, and County Commissioners added $700,000 for design documents, moving the long-delayed project forward. Construction documents were completed in early 2025, and Balfour Beatty was hired as Construction Manager at Risk to oversee building of the new campus, slated to open in 2026-27.

The New Ashley vision embodies “multi-solving”: a school as an anchor for neighborhood revitalization, workforce pathways, and family learning, backed by emerging community-benefit commitments so public dollars circulate locally. As Kellie Easton reminds us, “The children of Ashley cannot wait any longer.” Their persistence shows the power of collective action to turn advocacy into lasting, systemic change.

School Culture Rooted in Belonging and Safety

In Winston-Salem, My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) and the School Justice Partnership (SJP) are proving that system change is possible when community, educators, and justice partners move together. Guided by a vision of schools that support—not criminalize—students, this collaboration has driven concrete reforms to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and replace punishment with belonging.

In 2023–24, their advocacy led to policy changes eliminating out-of-school suspensions for K–3 students, except in the most serious cases, and to a revised Student Code of Conduct emphasizing restorative approaches and community support. Schools are now connected to a network of mentoring, mental health, and family-stability agencies, creating a safety net that addresses behavior through care, not exclusion .

The results are tangible: within one year, K–3 suspensions dropped by 46%, keeping hundreds of young learners in classrooms instead of pushing them out . This progress reflects the power of a shared agenda—educators, law enforcement, and community leaders working side by side to ensure every child feels safe, valued, and capable of success.

Why this matters now

Winston‑Salem/Forsyth County Schools are navigating an unprecedented budget crisis. Families and educators are feeling the strain, and inequities risk deepening. In this moment, Forsyth Family Power’s role is more important than ever: to help our community act together—keeping attention on children’s day‑to‑day needs while advancing the structural changes we know are required.

All In For Our Schools is one expression of that collective response: coordinated giving for classroom supplies and books, pathways to volunteer and partner, and clear, accessible information so neighbors can advocate with facts and urgency. These immediate steps sit alongside the long work—organizing for full and equitable funding, insisting on local transparency and accountability, and protecting the conditions that let every child learn.

“Together, we can inspire galaxies of greatness for generations to come.”

— Donovan Livingston, Lift Off

This crisis is not a single‑year problem and cannot be solved by charity alone. But it is a moment to move together—to demonstrate that when resources are scarce, our resolve and coordination are not. We will meet urgent classroom needs and press for the policy and system shifts that make crises less likely tomorrow.

What it will take

Center the people most affected.

Parents, students, and community educators must lead design, decision‑making, and accountability. That includes parent‑led Pre‑K standards, resident‑driven neighborhood plans, and youth leadership spaces.

Measure what matters and share it.

Track literacy, belonging, teacher distribution, suspension gaps, maternal care quality, and neighborhood conditions—and report progress publicly so trust can grow.

Invest where it matters.

Place effective, culturally competent teachers in schools serving Black and Latine students. Expand universal, full‑day Pre‑K with transportation. Scale trauma‑informed, bilingual supports. Build apprenticeships and parent workforce pathways. Replace punitive discipline with restorative approaches.

Align across sectors.

Schools cannot carry this alone. Health systems, housing partners, workforce, faith communities, and philanthropy must move in step—sharing goals, data, and timelines.

Bind commitments to community benefit.

Use tools like Community Benefits Agreements and public dashboards to ensure dollars and decisions deliver tangible gains for children and families.

“What’s ideal for the next five to ten years? …raise the curriculum… shift the focus from behavior to academics… prepare students to participate in this new economy…”

— Dr. Willette Nash

Our Promise

This is serious work, and the stakes are high. We have a responsibility to our youth—and to our shared future—to show up and do what must be done. Forsyth Family Power will keep aligning partners, lifting up community wisdom, and connecting near‑term action to long‑term change so that our county becomes a place where every child reads with confidence, every family is supported, and every neighborhood is a site of learning and belonging.

Lifelong learning and family wellbeing are not separate goals; they are the same work. In this crisis and beyond, we will move together at the pace of trust, with clear eyes and steady hands, until our community’s vision is not just articulated—but lived.

References