West Columbia Community Center
754 "B" Avenue
West Columbia, SC 29169
739-6238

"Striving to Make a Difference In Our Community"

In 1998, West Columbia established a Community Empowerment Center in the Lakeview Education Center, a former middle school situated in a low-to-moderate income neighborhood. Through the Center, now located at 754 "B" Avenue, the City provides outreach programs to citizens who need assistance because of disabilities, childcare constraints, unemployment or impoverishment.

The Center implemented tutoring services and parenting classes. It sponsored special events including Halloween and Christmas parties for at-risk young people. The Center also sponsored community involvement efforts such as Thanksgiving food baskets for shut-ins and a winter coat drive for needy citizens.

Partnerships have been developed with several businesses and charitable organizations, including Columbia Farms, Sickle Cell Anemia Association and God's Helping Hands. The Center enables diverse outreach programs to be merged into centrally organized efforts. It takes away barriers for citizens to contribute their talents and skills to enrich the lives of people in need.

The Food Pantry is perhaps the City's most significant on-going community support effort and is managed by the Community Liaison. To receive food from the pantry, a person must fill out an application that assesses the financial status and level of need. A log is maintained to track the number and type of people helped. The Community Liaison spearheads food drives three times a year to replenish the Food Pantry. Local school are targeted in March and city businesses in June. The Thanksgiving season food drive, from September through November, involves schools, businesses, churches and civic groups to provide food for the pantry and for the Thanksgiving Basket Give Away.

The Back-to-School Bash, an outgrowth of the parenting classes and tutoring program, is held in September to provide school supplies to needy children. The event is held in a city park and co-sponsored by many businesses in West Columbia that contributed food, drinks and cash donations to help kick off the new school year. Children receive bags of school supplies containing paper, pencils, pens, crayons, rulers and other items.

Volunteers at the Community Empowerment Center separate the supplies into age categories and bag them. The school supplies are purchased from the local school district warehouse with funds provided by jury duty pay donations. This unique program is designed to support the City's community-based prevention and intervention programs aimed at the at-risk youth. The program is the first of its kind in South Carolina and allows jurors, by completing a form, to donate their jury pay of $10 directly to the At-Risk Youth Prevention program. Each $10 donation buys school supplies for two children.