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RISE Risley campus being developed as multi‑service community resource center in Glynn County
Summary
Glynn County leaders and community partners described plans to use the former Risley school campus as a multi‑service resource center offering Head Start classrooms, cultural arts space, collaborative social services, and urban farming to address concentrated poverty in Brunswick.
Glynn County Commissioner Alan Booker and Therese Hamilton, CEO of Coastal Georgia Area Community Action Authority, said the former Risley school campus will be developed into a multi‑service community resource center aimed at serving families in a high‑poverty area of Brunswick.
The project is intended to combine early childhood classrooms, cultural‑arts programming, coordinated case management and neighborhood urban‑farming projects on a five‑acre campus that county leaders acquired for use “for this purpose.” Commissioner Alan Booker said the campus “was the first school for the black community here” and noted partners including the college, the health department and local nonprofits have formed a collaborative to run the site.
The plan centers services where they are most needed. “This campus actually sits in the middle of what is the area within Glynn County and the city of Brunswick that has the highest poverty level,” Therese Hamilton said, adding the site will house Head Start classrooms in the Jackson Building, arts programming in the Colored Memorial Building and a service hub in the former elementary school building where families can be assessed and referred to partner organizations.
Hamilton said the collaborative began work years ago drawing on surveys of residents and service clients to identify persistent barriers such as transportation and lack of nearby grocery access. She described current steps to address food access, including a community garden, construction of a hoop house and partnerships to create satellite greenhouses in public‑housing neighborhoods. Commissioner Booker noted Winn‑Dixie’s closure in the area had deepened a local food‑access problem.
Leaders also emphasized preserving and interpreting the campus’s history. Hamilton said Risley’s role as the county’s early educational institution for African Americans will be highlighted across the campus and used to support tours and cultural interpretation in addition to direct services.
Coastal Georgia Area Community Action Authority and partner organizations have been coordinating the project; Booker said the board of education transferred the campus to the collaborative for the stated purpose (the speakers described securing the property for $1). Hamilton invited residents to volunteer or seek more information via the agency’s site, coastalgacaa.org.
No formal funding amounts or a full project timeline were provided on the program. Leaders said the effort is ongoing and depends on continued collaboration among nonprofits, county officials, the college and federal or state grant opportunities.
For more information or to volunteer, project leaders pointed listeners to the Coastal Georgia Area Community Action Authority website (coastalgacaa.org).
