Message from the Board Chair & Director
For the past 25 years, Chatham County Together! has been working to change the lives of kids through Mentoring and other programs, including Family Advocacy, Teen Court, Community Service and Restitution, and Workforce Investment Act services. In 2011, we weighed the pros and cons of merging with CIS of NC, looked at CIS NC’s over its 20 years of existence, and ultimately felt that this would be a good marriage of missions. After 25 years of being CCT, you can imagine how much debate and discussion transpired.
We agreed that our mutual goals are to continue serving kids through the programs we have, expand services to areas of the county where we don’t have a traditional base of volunteers, and to add a school-based component focused on keeping kids in school, encouraging success in school, and promoting on-time graduation. We also looked at the long term ability for CCT to sustain itself as the county changes.
While it will be hard to change our agency’s name and merge with another organization, the benefits are extraordinary. Our organization, staff and volunteers are now a part of a statewide network, expanding our access to resources and enhancing our evaluation capabilities to ensure that the county’s most vulnerable youth will have the services they need. We are working with Chatham County Schools to develop on-site support
services to assure all kids have a chance to succeed.
CIS aligns with CCT’s mission of helping kids reach their full potential, and allows our organization to expand our mission’s scope. The transition will increase the number of kids we reach across the county and strengthen the support we can provide in school. Most importantly — because CIS boasts the strongest reduction in dropout rates of any fully scaled dropout prevention program — that we’ll be helping more at-risk youth to
succeed and graduate. The transition for CIS will enhance and deepen CCT’s original mission. Becoming a CIS affiliate assures we will continue providing quality programs and strong leadership for youth in Chatham County for the next 25 years!
Kim Caraganis, Executive Director
