Ruthie Trammel's Champions for Compassion

The challenges we are facing demand innovative solutions and a powerhouse team of leaders, change-makers, and influencers who are ready to lead with passion and professionalism. I need to hire a team that will mobilize volunteers. My dream team would be a program manager who would eventually become an associate director. That person would have an MPA, manage programs and teams, prepare budgets and look for grant funding. I would also have an administrative assistant who would grow into an executive assistant. These people will free me up to do what I do best create, innovate, connect and communicate! I would also hire myself! While fighting relentlessly for justice, I have committed a grave injustice by working without compensation.

I would imagine there are $100K allotted for each year. For the first year, I would expect to use the majority of the funds on payroll. I will ask for my community to match the funds. By the second year, my goal is to use 50% of the guaranteed funds for payroll. The other 50% would go towards initiatives i.e. Dream Big, buying devices and tutoring programs  . By year three, 100% of the funds will go directly towards community initiatives.

My dad is the son of an AME pastor from Texas and mom is a Jewish-Puerto Rican woman from NYC. They raised me in Wilmington, NC, where White supremacists overthrew  a multiracial governing body in 1898, seized property and killed hundreds. Racial and economic inequities persist to this day.  Wilmington could not offer a girl like me a place of belonging or equity. So, I created a world for myself and others where differences don’t divide and there is room for everyone to be valued. 

Mom found her calling as a social worker when I was in my teens.  Her compassion elevated people who felt enslaved to their addictions and gave them the courage to reclaim their lives. Two days after she died of ovarian cancer, I cast a vision for “Ruthie Trammel’s Champions for Compassion” to remove obstacles to recovery and restore hope. In 2019, I started a special project to advocate for equity and excellence in education. 

Last fall, I received the Wilma Woman to Watch Non-Profit Award for my advocacy and service. I also accepted an appointment by Governor Cooper to the MLK Commission. I will pursue justice, speak truth to power and bring healing with compassion.

In Wilmington, Black people make up 18% of the population but over 40% of us live in poverty. 16,000 of my neighbors live in a food desert with limited access to healthy food. One in five children here struggle with hunger. Our schools remain segregated and unequal. We have six schools in NHCS that are considered failing schools, all six serve primarily Black students. 

Children experiencing the harsh realities of poverty are at a sharp disadvantage regarding academic performance, attention span, behavior, emotional regulation and healthy physiological development. We became aware that an alarming number of students do not have a bed of their own. One counselor at an inner city school estimated that 25% of her middle school students did not have a bed. 

We launched "Dream Big" in March 2021. Tonight, 160 children are sleeping in their own beds! We partnered with school social workers and our hospital to give away high quality, non-toxic, self inflating air mattresses, bedding to NHCS students in need. We track specific data points to monitor their progress. I am partnering with UNCW to develop a public health campaign to promote healthy sleeping habits. We will continue here and expand to neighboring counties.

Champions for Compassion is unique and innovative because we combine proactive planning with cultivated care that offers short-term and long-term solutions for the greater community. While we recognize the importance of strategic planning, and work with diverse stakeholders to do so, we know some solutions can't wait. By addressing the root causes of inequity and negative social determinants of health, we can intervene and disrupt pathways toward addiction, disorders, and abuse early.  

It starts with our basic needs. We collect and measure quantitative and qualitative data on the determinants of health such as income, environment, and institutional access and analyze their impact on physiological function. For example, following natural disasters, many children lose access to safe and stable sleeping environments within their home. In turn, this disrupts their physical and emotional development that typically occurs during sleep. For an issue such as this, our organization would provide immediate short-term resources such as bedding and work on long-term resources such as public health campaigns that advocate institutions meet community needs and support healthy sleeping habits. 

Through collective efforts and education, we are interrupting the cycle of generational poverty, promoting public health and creating systems of justice.

My purpose is to love people, advocate for the unheard, fight for justice and fill in gaps. 

We still offer bikes and bus passes to people in recovery. Transportation assistance has been widely proven to help people stay on the road to recovery. We have promoted awareness and accessibility to mental health services and address the stigma specifically in veteran and Black communities through social media and special events. This year I hope to sponsor discussion groups for the Black community to address racialized trauma and increase accessibility to telemedicine by supporting connectivity and providing devices.

I host forums and events to bring people together and talk about how racism impacts us collectively, personally and mobilize people to take action. I am invited into local and state level conversations with officials and community leaders to advocate for policy regarding equity in education and criminal justice/police reform. Change is happening!

After the intensity of last year, we need to infuse art and celebration into racial justice work. We are teaching a line dance set to the Afropop hit song, Jerusalema and asking people to come out on Juneteenth to dance together and raise money to provide devices and tutoring for children.