Orangeburg ROSE: New program builds community connections

The effort’s called “Orangeburg ROSE,” with ROSE standing for “Raising Orangeburg Seeds of Excellence.” The city and Serve & Connect kicked off the effort Friday at the Adden Street Park.

“The ROSE initiative is really all about our young people,” Orangeburg City Administrator Sidney Evering II said.

The ROSE initiative is designed to ensure that youth and communities are given equal opportunities to grow, prosper and thrive in their lives and particularly in Orangeburg, Evering said.

Evering noted, “When we first started talking about this initiative, we talked about the rose that grew from concrete.”

He noted that the late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur wrote the poem, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete.”

“It’s basically about a rose that came up from the concrete, but instead of being impressed and marveling at the rose, a lot of people walked by the rose and were critical of it,” Evering said.

“That’s an analogy for what we have here in Orangeburg and in similar communities,” Evering said.

“We have this concrete that stifles the growth of our rose. This concrete represents poverty. It’s hopelessness, it’s drug abuse, it’s just all of the things that can hold a community, all of the things that can hold young people down,” he said.

“What can we do to break that concrete to really give people hope, to give people the opportunity to get out of poverty, to give people the drive to do better for themselves?” Evering said.

“Those are the concrete pillars we must knock down and break,” he said.

Evering continued the analogy, saying, “There are many seeds that are under the concrete that might not ever break through. It’s up to us to come together as a community because we need to break through. Because that rose can turn into a rose bush and that rose bush can turn into a rose garden and that rose garden can turn into a Garden City. And that’s what we are, Orangeburg is the Garden City.”

Friday’s event included free hot dogs, music and activities for children. Dozens of youth and adults enjoyed the festivities throughout the late afternoon.

Ultimately, the effort is designed to make Orangeburg a safer place to live by helping youth and families be successful.

Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Director Charles Austin Sr. said, “This is our park, these are our streets and we’re not surrendering our park and we’re not surrendering our streets to anybody.”

“You have my absolute commitment that we will do everything in our power to ensure that we maintain the motto that we have developed as an agency of excellence: Serving with integrity, nothing less is acceptable,” Austin said.

Orangeburg Mayor Pro Tem Liz Zimmerman Keitt said, “We celebrate being together as one. Orangeburg is a team.”

She noted that Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler wasn’t able to attend the event and asked her to make remarks on his behalf.

Keitt said, “It’s always good to have the community coming together because we need each other and we are thankful for being here.”

Dr. Kassy Alia Ray, the founder and CEO of Serve & Connect, said, “We’re an organization with the mission of fostering positive change through police and community partnerships.”

“One of our programs is called Compass and it’s where we help support locally driven movements where police and citizens are working together as one team, one community, to address the factors that contribute to crime in order to promote safety and thriving for everyone,” she said.

“That’s what the Orangeburg ROSE is. We are so proud and honored to be a part of facilitating this beautiful movement that is for the community and driven by the community,” she said.