Ten people graduated from Catholic Charities of South Carolina’s  (CCSC) Getting Ahead program in December 2025. The courses are designed to help individuals experiencing poverty to understand why they are “just getting by” and to build concrete plans toward long-term stability.

Graduates Brandon Anderson, Martha Cobb, Willa Dorsey, Kashonda Grant, Bernard Hazel, David Hazel, Jacqueline Hazel, Rosa Hazel, Chanda Sanders and Tammie Scott completed this financial literacy and life-skills course just before Christmas. This was a milestone celebration, too. It was the first class facilitated by two former graduates, David and Kendra Blango.

The program, based on “Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World” and the “Bridges Out of Poverty” framework, has been offered at CCSC’s Georgetown office twice yearly since 2018. The program is now expanding to Charleston and other field offices as part of the Catholic outreach’s services that assist more than 50,000 individuals annually.

Building pathways out of poverty

Participants attended group sessions over 16 weeks, exploring the realities of poverty, local community barriers and the “hidden rules” of economic class. They completed a personal “future story,” where they built budgets, identified local resources and set practical goals around employment, education, housing and family stability.

Crystal Geathers is the grants specialist for CCSC and helped initiate the Getting Ahead program in 2017, working with Sister Mary Francis Bassick, a Daughter of Charity. Geathers said the program is important because it gives participants needed support and tools to see their own potential with new clarity.

“We walk alongside individuals who are working hard to build stability for themselves and their families. Getting Ahead helps them not only understand the challenges they face, but also discover their strengths, set meaningful goals and create a path toward lasting change. It empowers people to realize that their future can be different, and that they already have what it takes to get there,” she said.

The program boasts a 97% success rate. At least 35 individuals completed the program in Georgetown in its early years, with many achieving significant life changes.

Stability means everything

Graduates have moved from unsafe, unstable housing into safe, subsidized apartments after learning to navigate housing systems and expunge records. Others have launched small businesses, including a lawn-care company, using the financial planning, resource-building and confidence gained in this workshop.

Rhett Young, executive director of CCSC, said “mission” is what drives this statewide nonprofit. He said their work is inspired by St. John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio (Mission of the Redeemer).

“The missionary is urged on by ‘zeal for souls,’ a zeal inspired by Christ’s own charity, which takes the form of concern, tenderness, compassion, openness, availability and interest in people’s problems. Jesus’ love is very deep: he who knew what was in man (Jn 2:25) loved everyone by offering them redemption and suffered when it was rejected” (RM 89).

“This is the bedrock of all of our programs,” Young said, “to serve with the heart of Jesus with a zeal for souls inspired by Christian charity — caritas.”

Kendra Blango added that “learning in love always helps when trying to get ahead.”