Stephanie Purdy Email & Phone Number

As Director of Outreach at a large church in downtown Cary, NC, I have successfully mobilized staff and volunteers for the past few years to engage in partnering with and serving alongside the greater Cary community. Listening to the needs identified by the community we are serving, I have created partnerships to engage donors and mobilize volunteer teams to work side by side with our neighbors to develop solutions and access to resources. I am currently engaged in committed anti racism work, which is informing how I can be better at my work in outreach and education. I continue to do personal work in this area, as well as facilitate anti racism studies and events in our church.In this role I have prioritized addressing food security and supporting education and Cary schools as our two main foci for our church’s outreach vision and mission. I immediately responded to our neighborhood families experiencing food insecurity during the Pandemic when schools shut down, leveraging government grants and restaurant vendor partnerships to give families access to daily hot meals for months, and later produce and non-perishable groceries.I also mobilized volunteer tutors and created a virtual learning space for neighborhood students and families to support our neighborhood elementary schools during virtual learning, which continues to thrive. I planned literacy lessons to be utilized by our 20 volunteer tutors and coached our volunteers in literacy instruction to support our K-8th grade students in strengthening their literacy skills. My background as a professional educator, Teaching Fellow, and over ten years experience in the classroom, and my additional years experience in the field of outreach ministry have strengthened my leadership skills, my creativity and resourcefulness in problem solving, my ability to manage and coordinate teams of diverse personalities to achieve goals, and my resolve to be an accomplice in making this a more equitable community and world. I am a highly relational person, committed to working towards equity in education, especially with those communities who have been historically underserved and marginalized, and my experiences as a classroom teacher and now as Director of Outreach/Community Engagement have given me a wide range of experiences and opportunity to educate, mobilize, and lead to strengthen and impact our community with tangible results for improved outcomes for children and families alike.

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  Appalachian State University

  3.87