By Becca Starkes
It all started with a game of basketball.
The neighborhood kids on the East Side love to hang out at Mall Playground.
During her senior year at the College, Samantha Sammis ‘11 felt called to get involved with the youth of Charleston’s East Side, a historically black neighborhood tucked between East Bay Street and Meeting Street. Sammis, a graduate of the Honors College, and a group of friends began playing basketball with kids at Mall Playground, part of Hampstead Square in the heart of the East Side community.
The group volunteered a few hours on Friday every week to travel to Mall Playground, basketballs in tow. With each game, Sammis and her friends slowly bonded with the kids and their families. Feeling optimistic about the relationships they were building, the group decided to organize additional events, including cookouts and a Vacation Bible School.
When she graduated with degrees in sociology and religious studies from the College in 2011, Sammis moved to Boston to participate in Match Corps, a one-year urban education program, and start a life there. Although she valued her experience in the East Side and the people who lived there, she thought that chapter of her life was over.
But things don’t always work out the way we plan.
Sammis took a vacation to Charleston in the spring of 2012, and her friends encouraged her to visit the neighborhood kids in the East Side.
“They will not remember me,” Sammis remembers saying. “That’s not my life anymore.”
But then she went to America Street, which runs straight through Hampstead Square, and all the kids she bonded with the year before remembered her name and begged her to come back to Charleston. It didn’t take much to convince her to return.
“I had no idea who I was going to live with, where I was going to live, what I was going to do, or what my job was going to be. I just knew that I needed to move back to Charleston and live in the East Side,” says Sammis.
She shared her idea with a few friends and assembled a group of eight people — four men and four women, including Sammis — to occupy a house on Columbus Street and devote themselves to empowering East Side residents. This original team began planting the seeds for the growth of a full-fledged nonprofit organization.
Loving America Street volunteers bond with neighborhood kids at Mall Playground
Loving America Street was born.
After settling in, the motley crew of residents, aging from 19 to 27 years old, began opening their home each Thursday night for community dinner and Bible study. Their East Side neighbors often brought gifts — everything from soap to tuna fish sandwiches — to thank the group for their generosity.
“It’s still by far one of my favorite days of the week,” says Sammis.
And if Loving America Street doesn’t sound like other nonprofit organizations, that’s because it isn’t. Sammis describes it as a “relationship-based nonprofit.”
“We don’t have any other philosophy other than [building] genuine relationships with our neighbors,” she says.
The organization, which officially gained 501(c)3 status in 2014, focuses on asset-based community development. “It means we take the strengths of the neighborhood and use those to empower people,” says Sammis.
The group’s most recent and ambitious project to date involved taking over the neighborhood laundromat, now renamed Laundry Matters. When the previous tenant’s lease expired, the building’s owner offered the space to Sammis, thinking she might want to use it for meetings or Loving America Street events.
When Sammis visited the old, run-down laundromat, she was appalled at its condition. Her gut reaction was to run in the opposite direction of such a time-consuming and potentially expensive project. But after reflecting and conferring with her board members, Sammis felt they had to preserve the laundromat — the only one within walking distance for East Side residents.
The bright and cheery exterior of Laundry Matters
The landlord asked Sammis if she knew how to run a laundromat. Like a true liberal arts graduate, she responded, “Nope. But I’ll learn.”
The group raised over $50,000 in three months, which helped pay for six new washers and four new dryers, and recruited volunteers to help repaint and decorate the space. Artwork and books were donated by friends, family, and community partners. If you walk into Laundry Matters today, you’ll find bright green walls, inspirational paintings, cheerful music, and seating for the organization’s neighborhood gatherings.
Though Sammis has no background in business or nonprofit management, she says her time at the College showed her how to learn just about anything.
“If someone’s not going to teach you how to do something, just figure it out,” she says.
Kady Preston ‘14, a graduate of the College’s elementary education program and a Loving America Street board member, says her experience with Teacher Leader, a leadership program for future educators, taught her how to network with community leaders and make relationships that can result in investment in the organization.
Sammis, Preston, and the rest of the Loving America Street crew are constantly busy organizing events in the community — from weekly outings with youth in the park to bi-annual cookouts and free, professional family photo sessions at Christmastime.
“It gives them something pretty priceless they can keep forever,” Sammis says of the family photos.
Samantha Sammis, second from left, and Kady Preston, to Sammis’s right, pose with kids from the East Side neighborhood.
Ultimately, the mission behind Loving America Street boils down to a passion for building relationships and making change in people’s lives.
“People are people, not projects,” Sammis says. “Instead of treating the East Side like a low-income service project, I wanted it to be my home. I wanted these people to be my neighbors and my friends.”
And if you asked any of her East Side neighbors, they’d probably say Sammis is a fantastic neighbor to have.
This article was written by Becca Starkes, a senior from Myrtle Beach, S.C., majoring in communication at the Honors College at the College of Charleston. She is also on the executive board of the Student Alumni Associates.
