Change Starts Here

In September 2018, Christina Hampton was working two part-time jobs as a food server, raising her young daughter and taking classes at Trident Technical College when she heard that Hurricane Florence was headed to Charleston.  A mandatory evacuation was ordered and both restaurants for which she worked were shutting down. Christina was worried about her daughter’s safety, so she went to stay with a friend inland. But what scared her the most was what might happen immediately afterward. “As a single mother who is almost always struggling to make ends meet, missing a few days of work can be detrimental,” she says. “But I am working hard to finish school and that is what keeps me going.”  Christina never thought she would go to college. Nobody in her family had ever gone and her grades were mostly average. She ran track, but never thought she was good enough to get scholarships. She remembers all of her friends talking about going away to college and says, “I...