CORE gets $1 million to expand community services in Robeson County

Aug. 28—LUMBERTON — The Community Organized Relief Effort, or CORE, can expand on its crisis relief work in Robeson County thanks to a $1 million, one-year grant the nonprofit organization received this week.

The Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration awarded the grant to help CORE expand its COVID-19 community services primarily for the Lumbee Tribe and Black communities in Robeson County. The grant will support efforts to engage Hispanic communities.

This grant follows another award secured in June through HRSA and Partners in Health, which provided an initial $260,000, according to CORE. The $1.26 million will enable CORE to support Robeson County and the Lumbee Tribe to intensify vaccination advocacy among the under-resourced communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

"We are in the middle of another major COVID wave. It is vital to protect our communities with easy access to vaccines and resources," said Ann Lee, CORE co-founder and CEO. "Working alongside the Lumbee Tribe and Robeson County has taught us that there is no other way out of a crisis than by supporting one another. We are always in awe of this community, who inspires us with their strength and compassion for their neighbors."

Lumbee Tribal Chairman Harvey Godwin Jr. said the tribe has worked alongside CORE since Hurricane Florence relief efforts were underway. The program was called J/P Haitian Relief Organization at the time and they responded with food distribution, cash and hygiene kits, and trained a cadre of Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) to help the community respond to future crises. That relationship has continued throughout the pandemic.

"The Lumbee have collaborated with both CORE and World Central Kitchen for the past 17 months of the pandemic through COVID-19 testing and creating food security for our local area," Godwin said.

With only 34% of Robeson County residents 18 years old and older vaccinated, according to reports from the Robeson County Health Department, the Delta variant is quickly spreading, causing a 151% increase in new cases over the past 14 days.

"This funding from HRSA will provide the CORE and its partners with the tools to plan and support SERVE, a program that will address ongoing COVID-19 inequities in rural Robeson County, North Carolina," said Craig Wilkins, Lumbee Tribe member and a senior advisor at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Under the leadership of Linda Maynor Oxendine, CORE's North Carolina area manager, in collaboration with local health, tribal, and community partners, SERVE will build CORE's capacity to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, Wilkins said.

"We're quite aware of where Robeson County's vaccination rates stand as far as COVID so the timing was perfect for this award," Oxendine said. "By having this funding it allows us to go above and beyond any measures that we have seen thus far in the community and it allows us to improve vaccine confidence by having this funding. It also allows us to resolve vaccine accessibility and challenges we see in our community and it allows us to build a community outreach workforce to serve this trusted messengers."

The goal of the SERVE project is to engage the community, respond to hesitancy and support access to increase vaccination rates and strengthen local public health, according to CORE. To build trust and foster dialogue about vaccine hesitancy, CORE will assemble multifaceted coalitions to engage community leaders, religious leaders, tribal leaders, educators and local governments.

"We have seen a lot of hesitancy in getting the vaccination in our community because of all of the misinformation and so we want to build confidence because we're very vulnerable and we're a medically underserved community," Oxendine said. "What we've done is we've got a lot of partners, because this is a community initiative despite the money being given to CORE. CORE is a gap-filler."

Some of the partners include those established through the CERT members deployed throughout the county.

The CERT consist of students from the Public Schools of Robeson County and The University of North Carolina at Pembroke who train at Robeson Community College to be community workers that go out and deploy CORE's campaign geared toward educating people more about the coronavirus.

"We're taking a holistic approach. It's not just vaccination. We're providing education across the board," Oxendine said. "We want to provide health screenings. We want to provide resource coordination."

The funding will allow for five full-time employees to be hired to administer the program and it opens up 20 part-time positions CERT members and volunteers can apply for.

Chairman Godwin said the county is in good hands with Oxendine.

"I am very proud that Lumbee tribal member Linda Oxendine will continue to lead through CORE," Godwin said. "She has been a Champion for the safety and well being of our local citizens."

Tomeka Sinclair can be reached at [email protected] or 910-416- 5865.