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| Jehan Benton, M.A., Social Service Administration, University of Chicago; Bachelor of Arts Economics & Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Community Investment Specialist, United Way of Greater Greensboro Tel: 336.378.5064 Email: Jehan.benton@unitedwaygso.org |
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Biographical Information
Jehan Benton, Community Investment Specialist with the United Way of Greater Greensboro, returned home to Guilford County after earning an advanced master's degree in social service administration from the University of Chicago. As the lead staff person on United Way's Caring for Everyone's Health community impact focus area, Ms. Benton facilitates the allocation of $2.7 million in funds. These funds are distributed to agency programs that facilitate the focus areas' vision of giving all people in Greater Greensboro the opportunity to maximize their physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being.
Her non-profit background experience includes program planning and development, financial management, resource coordination, research and evaluation and grant writing. In addition, Ms. Benton is an active member in the community, working to improve the lives of Greensboro residents, through various projects and board participation.
Since her return to Greensboro, she has created, coordinated and supported community and volunteer support for a day-long event that provided food, toys, health and safety information and activities for more than 35 families and 80 children in the Thriving at Three program, garnering more than $9,000 in in-kind community sponsor donations. She was also instrumental in designing and implementing a two-day Substance Abuse Symposium and developed public educational programs and materials relating to early childhood underdevelopment problems for the Guilford County Substance Abuse Coalition. Ms. Benton is also a key staff person on Guilford County's Task Force to End Homelessness's administrative and implementation team that has been charged with creating a 10 year plan to end chronic homelessness.
In 2004 and 2005, while attending University of Chicago graduate school, she worked with the Cicero Youth Outreach Services as a treatment counselor, preparing quarterly recreational program budgets. She also planned and ran summer community education programs on gangs, substance abuse, parenting skills and anger management. For her clients - chemically abusive adolescents and their families - Benton provided services such as needs assessments, treatment efficiency and service rationing analysis. She helped women establish a self-esteem program and developed and monitored treatment plans for at-risk clients.
Benton also started forums to address community challenges such as housing, health, and employment, coordinated and supervised mentors and tutors for at-risk students and supervised service learning hours for Brown and Oglesby alumni. As a resource coordinator intern (K-8) for Oglesby and Brown elementary schools she also coordinated a Read to Achieve "reading time out," literacy and books-focused day for more than 400 children.
Currently, Benton is working on her AmeriCorp Professional Corp research project for the UNCG Center for New North Carolinians. She is working with Tara Sandercock from The Community Foundation to develop and facilitate a series of sustainability workshops targeted at non-profit agencies that focus primarily on programs that work with ethnic and cultural minorities. The workshop series will help agencies identify funding sources, write strong grant proposals, develop resources, create strategic plans to implement these programs, improve on their outcomes measurement and reporting requirements and strengthen their community collaborations.
CNNC Research Fellow/
AmeriCorps ACCESS Project, Professional Corps Member, 2006-07
To develop and facilitate a series of sustainability workshops targeted at non-profit agencies that focus primarily on programs that work with ethnic and cultural minorities. Participants will gain experience in identifying assets and needs of ethnic and cultural minority groups; designing and evaluating human service programs; identifying and researching funding sources and writing strong grant proposals. In addition, the workshop series will assist agencies in creating strategic plans to implement initiatives and programs and in developing effective outcome measurement and reporting systems. The goal of this project is to impact the community through the cultivation of stronger communitywide human services programs for ethnic and cultural minorities throughout North Carolina.
Links
URL - www.lfbscholarly.com/new_americans/parks_320922.htm
An article authored by Virginia Parks entitled, The Geography of Immigrant Labor Markets: Space, Networks, and Gender.
URL - www.guilfordnonprofits.org/consortium/volunteer.html
The Guilford Non-Profit Consortium composed of nonprofit organizations and agencies throughout Guilford County with the purpose of connecting the citizens of the County to the nonprofit community to share resources and support among their members.
URL - www.ncnonprofits.org/
The NC Center for Non Profits' mission is to serve, promote, and represent the nonprofit sector and strengthen nonprofits' effectiveness as they improve North Carolinians' quality of life.