Showing love through annual Love Day event
TEVIN STINSON
THE CHRONICLE
Last Saturday, local nonprofit BOND Cares hosted its annual Love Day at the YMCA REACH Center at Winston Lake. What started out as something BOND Cares founder Porsche Jones did out of the kindness of her heart for a few families she knew, has grown to become one of the city’s biggest back-to-school giveaways. This year the event helped 638 students prepare for the start of the new school year.
Since 2023, BOND (Building On New Development) Cares has partnered with local organizations and businesses to help provide students with book bags, clothes and shoes. While continuing partnerships with Big Brothers Big Sisters Inc. and local nonprofit Beyond Basics and more than 30 different vendors, this year BOND Cares also partnered with Novant Health and LabCorp to provide free health screenings for adults, free children’s vaccines and health assessments.
Inside the YMCA REACH (Resources for Economic Development, Academics, and Community Health) Center at Winston Lake, Novant has a 16,000 sq. ft. health clinic. While directing traffic outside the REACH Center on Saturday morning, Leigh Hammond, a community health educator with Novant Health, talked about their commitment to ensuring everyone has access to health care. “At Winston, we just put in a physician clinic that’s a family practice, so they serve everyone from children to adults. They have X-Ray services, lab services, and there’s other services, but we really want to serve this community,” Hammond said.
When discussing the growth of the event, Jones, who works as a health services manager for Novant Health, said it was great to be able to bring both sides of her passions together to uplift the community. With the event growing every year, Jones is already working on how she can make next year’s Love Day even bigger.
“We wanted to create an event where it would be a one-stop shop where kids could get their back-to-school vaccines, health assessment to return to school, and the parents and adults could get their screenings done as well,” Jones continued. “Just excited for the work we were able to pull together. I think it was a success, but I think we can always improve and do better so we’re looking forward to partnering with other programs and organizations to ensure our kids get exactly what they need to start school.”
