Community members collaborate to make Canton better

By Courtney Warren 

Collaboration, community, and being led by the Lord are what drive Rev. James Allen of Harvest Hope Christian Center, Angela Carson with Pine Grove Association, and Sharon Campbell with Sharon Campbell Solution Group to create a better Canton. 

These leaders invited all nonprofits, faith-based, community-based organizations, and community leaders to discuss ways to improve the city during a weekend-long event.
Campbell said, “I know Rev. Allen, and he was telling me about an opportunity to bring together the citizens of Canton. We’ve met by Zoom the last two months with citizens so we could plan what it all needed to look like to create this weekend event. We worked with the citizens doing an organizational capacity building a non-profit model for the city of Canton.”
“The highlight was bringing over thirty nonprofits together to teach them organization, development, capacity building. On Saturday and Monday, we did women business entrepreneurship and small business development,” added Campbell. 

Rev. Allen said, “We want to make Canton better. There are so many things Canton needs to be the city she used to be. We’d love to revitalize our downtown and create new housing opportunities and create social programs that can build families. We want to create opportunities for kids to be involved in programs after school and make Canton better overall.” 
Allen appeared before the Canton Board of Alderman in hopes of furthering their collaboration. 

“We proposed to the board a partnership with the city to help create space to operate out of. Harvest of Hope Christian Center is the one banner. We want to teach small business development and help people find grants and find the funding necessary for their programs. We want the city to partner with us to find the space and resources.”

For more information, or to get involved, call 601-813-8758.