An idea, a phone call and a motivation to help save young lives all led to an endowment with the North Carolina Community Foundation.

Phil Work, a member of the Sneads Ferry Rotary Club, was reading an article in Rotary magazine. His eyes came upon a story about the Rotary Club in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

The club learned suicide had become the leading cause of death among Colorado adolescents since the COVID-19 pandemic. “They realized that this was a huge problem in their area, but then reaching out a little further, they realized that it was (a problem) nationwide,” Work said.

To address the issue locally, the Rotary Club of Highlands Ranch funded a $500,000 fellowship to Children’s Hospital Colorado to train new mental health clinicians.

Work became inspired to start a similar fund with the money raised from the Sneads Ferry Rotary Club’s annual summer fishing tournament. He immediately called his friend Dawn Rochelle, a fellow Rotary Club member and the CEO of One Place, a nonprofit child advocacy center in Jacksonville that provides professional resources for children suffering from adverse experiences.  

Work asked Rochelle if One Place could benefit from a similar fund to hire more mental health clinicians. She quickly said yes.

Rochelle was busy preparing for One Place’s upcoming move to its new 35,000 square-foot facility, the SECU Hope Center, which is scheduled to open in July 2025.

But with a larger building comes the need to fund more staff, especially in the field of mental health. “We know just from the cases that we have in the child advocacy center at any given time, we can have up to 900 children that are in need of mental health services,” Rochelle said.

Work and Rochelle decided to create an endowment specifically designed to hire more mental health clinicians, but Work didn’t know how to create one. Rochelle suggested Work contact the North Carolina Community Foundation. She knew about NCCF because One Place chief advancement officer Ann Marie Raymond is the treasurer for the Onslow Caring Communities Foundation, an NCCF affiliate.

Work called Beth Boney Jenkins, NCCF’s Development Officer for the East.

Less than seven weeks later, the Rotary Club of Sneads Ferry presented Rochelle with a $25,000 check to begin the One Place Child and Adolescent Mental Health Endowment at NCCF. Their goal is to raise $1 million for the endowment by July in time for the opening of the new facility.

The annual interest from a $1 million endowment would allow One Place to fund the addition of two mental health clinicians every year in perpetuity. “You always look for legacy, and you always look for the legs to the legacy,” Rochelle said. “With this partnership (with NCCF), the work really does live past us.”

Rochelle is hopeful One Place can also serve as a training ground for clinicians to take their knowledge to other military communities. “I like to think of us as a river, not a reservoir,” she said. “What flows through us benefits more than us, and that’s really okay.”

When talking about the endowment’s potential impact, Rochelle held back tears. “It gives affirmation that we’re on the right path to do this work,” she said. “I always like to highlight that if you have an idea, just share it. If the first person doesn’t think it’s a good one, go to the next one. Because it takes us all to solve really big problems, and Phil and his club members are testimony that you can have impact off one idea.”