Spotlight on Our Champions: Meet Vivian Bolden

We often highlight the special partners that make our work possible. This month, we thought we’d spend a few minutes in conversation with Vivian Bolden, one of the community members whose volunteer work and neighborhood connection is helping to transform Klondike for the future.

Vivian Bolden, Klondike resident and community champion.

Volunteer work gives some neighborhood members a sense of community and hope. Klondike resident Vivian Bolden said that both those feelings had been missing from her neighborhood before its partnership with Whole Child Strategies. “The neighborhood has changed tremendously since I started working with Whole Child,” she said. “Before the neighbors kept to themselves. Now they know we have someone to help. And they come to me and discuss what’s working, what isn’t working, and anything they see that needs to be fixed.”

Ms. Bolden is one of a handful of community members that Whole Child considers “champions” -- people who have stepped up not only as volunteers in Klondike and Smokey City, but as community leaders and conduits for change. For Bolden, that’s meant being someone that her neighbors can talk to about conditions in their neighborhood, and who children can count on as another grandmother. 

“I’ve lived here for 20 years. Working with Whole Child Strategies has given me more insight on things that I can do to help these children. They can feel like there’s someone they can talk to.”

Before the pandemic, Ms. Bolden said she enjoyed volunteering at Perea Elementary School, helping with parent engagement activities like parties and community meetings. Given her work there, she was able to help organize a drive to make sure the students had socks and hats during the colder months. “I miss seeing those babies every day,” she says. “They would check on me just like I’d check on them!” 

Ms. Bolden says it’s a bit harder now to keep those connections, given the quarantine conditions brought on by COVID-19. But she still makes every effort to talk to be a listener and helper in her community. “I’m just a neighbor in the neighborhood, paying attention to my surroundings. I’m a homebody and spend a lot of time just sitting on my porch. But I interact with the older adults and the children. When I see something, I say something.”

Read more about Whole Child Strategy’s work in neighborhoods on our website.