March 2014 Profile: Belinda Grant
By Moe White
True Passion: God, family, and serving others.
Hidden Talent: Home decorating and cooking.
Biggest Indulgence: Buying for my grandbaby.
Happiest Time in Her Life: Wedding day, birth of my children, birth of my grandbaby.
Support Network: My husband, children, our immediate and church family, community partners.
Favorite Authors for Motivation and Spirituality: Many spiritual meditations and writings by Dr. John H. Grant.
Tenets of Life: God and faith
Important Quote: “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” ~ Winston Churchill
When people in Asheville think of Belinda K. Grant, they think of the Mt. Zion Community Development Corporation. Unless they think of Project EMPOWER, which takes educational programs into city schools to help teens learn how to avoid unwanted pregnancy—or of Project NAF, which offers young women a wide range of pre-natal and neonatal services that continue until a newborn is two years old. Or unless they know her best as First Lady of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where her husband of 34 years, Dr. John H. Grant, has been pastor for almost 25 years.
If anyone has a problem, and Mrs. Grant can do anything to help, she will. She learned early to help others in need, because, as her mother told her, “It could be you on the other side of that desk.” With that background, she says with a laugh, “It was in the cards from the beginning for me to be a social worker.”
She was born in Laurens, SC, to a very close family who were always there for each other. “My parents took in people in need, family members, non-family members. Even to this day my mom would give her light-bill money to someone in need,” says Grant. “And then she’ll say, ‘How can I pay my light bill?’”
So it was perfectly natural that after Belinda finished high school she majored in Sociology at Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC, and then earned a Masters in Adult Education from Appalachian State.
Grant waxes eloquent when I ask her about MZCDC, of which she is Executive Director. One of the Corporation’s primary goals is “collaboration with local community-based organizations in the physical redevelopment of the Block”—and discussions with developers and other stakeholders are ongoing. The other goal is “empowerment of the individual and community by providing spiritual, economic, socio-economic, educational, and cultural opportunities to the greater Asheville-Buncombe County community to address the need for jobs, housing, crime prevention, education and health care.”
That empowerment comes in part through Project NAF (Nurturing Asheville/Area Families), established in 1998, which functions as Buncombe County’s “Healthy Beginnings Project” with the goal of attaining and maintaining healthy life choices for pregnant and post-partum women through advocacy, support services, and individualized help. These women are “program participants,” not clients; they are asked to be participatory agents in their own care.
Project NAF aims to reduce infant mortality rates and increase satisfaction with support services. The project encourages prenatal care—which offers maternal health screenings, helps avoid and identify birth abnormalities, and leads to positive birth outcomes—and exercise, breast-feeding, and good nutrition practices among participants
The program also increases their knowledge about and access to area resources, including transportation: funding even includes a budget line for city bus passes.
Grant notes with pleasure that “Project NAF was part of a statewide committee to standardize forms and programming,” one of which became the basis for an empowerment plan for young women, including a questionnaire asking participants about their goals, needs, dreams of accomplishment—questions they’d never been asked before.
NAF has helped more than 400 women, most of them from early in their pregnancy to the infant’s second birthday—and after: NAF gives brand-new car seats and Pampers to each participant when her baby is born.
“These programs are a ministry to me,” says Grant. That ministry was cited as one of the top seven programs in the U.S. in 2001, and ten years later was named a program model by NC Child Fatality Task Force. And in 2013 Belinda Grant received the first Lisa C. Clark Bridge-Builder Award from the NC Department of Health and Human Services.
“I am task-oriented. My mama taught me ‘Whether a job is big or small, do it well or not at all,’ and that’s what I try to do.”
The other major program of the MZCD is Project EMPOWER, Buncombe County’s “Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative,” which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2013. Its works to reduce teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS rates and encourage teens to stay in school and graduate.
The curriculum, serving 65 students annually in Asheville High and Asheville Middle School, is called ‘Making Proud Choices.’ It’s offered during school hours at the high school; at the middle school it’s a collaborative after-school program through Asheville City Schools Foundation’s “In Real Life” program. Parental permission is required for enrollment, and EMPOWER offers parental appreciation events in addition to academic, cultural enrichment, and fun activities for the youths who participate.
Grant explains that parent involvement is essential. “Project Empower is abstinence-based but not abstinence-only. But teens have a right to be educated as to the consequences if they do make these choices.”
Since childhood Belinda K. Grant has understood that, “No matter how God blesses you, it could be you on the other side of the desk. You have to treat every man woman or child as the most important person in the world.”
As for what she’d tell younger people about their futures, “You have to have some idea of the essence of who you are and who you belong to, and of God’s plan for your life. Once you know God’s plan for your life, you have to have a passion for what you do, and if there’s a need for it, fill it. Just do it.”
