Charleston Promise Neighborhood

Charleston Promise Neighborhood (CPN), a 501c3 non-profit organization incorporated in May 2010, was founded through a groundbreaking public/private partnership between Charleston County Council, the City of Charleston, the City of North Charleston and Charleston County School District (CCSD), local organizations, and community leaders. Our vision and purpose is to transform our “Neighborhood”, a 5.6 square mile area of Charleston County that straddles portions of Charleston and North Charleston, and is home to just over 29,000 residents--6,400 of whom are children under the age of 18.  This geographic area coincides with the attendance zones of four Charleston County School District (CCSD) elementary schools with high concentrations of children living in poverty: Chicora School of Communications, James Simons Elementary School, Mary Ford Elementary School, and Sanders-Clyde Creative Arts School.

CPN’s mission is to ensure the Neighborhood is a place where residents are engaged in the community, and every child is on track to graduate high school with the abilities necessary to succeed in college, the military, or the workforce.

CPN provides a full complement of services to ensure our Neighborhood students have the supports necessary to graduate high school and to lead healthy, prosperous lives. The goal is to increase opportunities for our students to learn, thereby closing opportunity gaps, and accelerating student academic achievement.  To combat community challenges, CPN implements five evidence-based initiatives in its four CPN schools.

  1. Expanded Learning Time (ELT), an innovative afterschool, summer learning, and field trip program provided to nearly 400 students each year, focusing on academic and personal enrichment, tying back directly, to school day teaching;
  2. Parent & Community Engagement Initiatives, programs and events designed to empower, equip, and engage community members, families, and students;
  3. School-Day Supports, CPN-funded resources that provide additional in school professionals, professional development, strategic planning support, youth leadership development programs, and targeted principal consultation;
  4. KidsWell Health & Wellness Clinics, on-site, school-based health centers (SBHCs) designed to improve students’ access to quality healthcare and health literacy information; and
  5. YouthPromise, programming that engages middle and high-school student-leaders in monthly sessions focused on effective communication skills, etiquette tools, leadership training and citizenship.

Vicky Ingalls, Director of Programs, stated that “Since I have been with CPN from the early days, I’m most excited to see the evolution of our KidsWell school-based health program, with services provided by MUSC.  We increased access to healthcare for our students, starting with a volunteer pediatrician 8 hours/week and now operating with the current MUSC team of 6 + serving our schools five days/week with the added telehealth component.  I appreciate our ability to work closely with our schools, community and business partners to offer other innovative wrap-around supports to our students.” 

In the last year, Vicky has actively served on both the Access to Care and Data Workgroups.  Charleston Promise Neighborhood supported the community health needs assessment process in 2013 with Roper St. Francis and the collaborative community health assessments with MUSC and TUW in 2016.  In 2019, Vickie has identified and will be leading several focus groups representing community and parents, to include those critical community voices. “I appreciate the efforts to be more collaborative and engage with the end “users” of our community health resources.  I am encouraged by the progress we have made collectively as a community on a number of our priority areas, and I look forward to working with HTC to advance some of the work we’ve started in our schools around trauma-informed education and creating a compassionate school environment.”