Jewel Jefferies vividly remembers when she first encountered Communities In Schools. It was her first week of school as a freshman at West Charlotte High School. Jewel grew up in Charlotte with her mom, a twin sister, and two younger siblings. They mostly lived in Section 8 public housing and had to move a lot. In fact, they had just moved to a new neighborhood which was zoned for West Charlotte as she entered 9th grade, and she didn’t know any kids attending there.
That first week, Jewel did not want to go to the cafeteria for lunch because she didn’t know anyone and she admits to having some social anxiety at the time. So she stayed in the Science building when all the other kids left for lunch. That’s when a woman with “the prettiest smile” saw her and asked Jewel if she was going to lunch. “I told her, no, because I didn’t know anyone at the school,” said Jewel, “and that’s when she welcomed me into her office, and we started talking.”
That woman was a CIS Site Coordinator at West Charlotte, Ms. Draine, who noticed Jewel and pulled her into her office. “I remember noticing all of the HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) flags on her office wall and her AKA sorority letters on her desk,” said Jewel. “I knew very little about college because no one in my family had gone to college. It was all new to me.”
What she remembers most about Ms. Draine was how warm and welcoming she was. “She allowed me to come to her office whenever I needed a safe space to disclose personal things going on with me as a teenager,” Jewel recalled. “She also connected me to a teen mental health support group during my sophomore year to help me manage my emotions, and we would have weekly check-ins to see how that was going.”
Ultimately, Ms. Draine and the CIS team at West Charlotte helped Jewel and her twin sister explore post-secondary education and provided all the support they needed to explore colleges, navigate the admissions and financial aid process, and search for scholarships.
Today Jewel is a proud graduate of Fayetteville State University, where she majored in Social Work. Later she earned her master’s degree in social work (M.S.W.) at Johnson C. Smith University. And now Jewel’s life has come “full circle”: she was recently hired by Communities In Schools as the CIS Site Coordinator at J. H. Gunn Elementary School!
“The support and resources CIS gave me as a teenager helped me in so many ways,” said Jewel. “My experience in CIS and the relationships I built with my Site Coordinator and other CIS staff influenced my education and career path. It’s a big part of the reason I’ve chosen to work at CIS and have the opportunity to give back to the organization and the community that gave so much to me. “
Thank you for helping us place Site Coordinators like Jewel Jefferies in CMS schools with a donation today. Your gift impacts students in Charlotte’s Title I schools, ensuring they have the support and resources they need to achieve in school and beyond.