Progress 2018 -- Making a Difference: In the service of the King
By Steve Herring
Published in News on February 23, 2018 11:38 AM
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Chris Whitley works on one of his abstract paintings to be sold in the Olive Art gallery. Although Whitley is not an artist by trade he uses it as an outlet for his creativity while being able to raise money for All the King's Children.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Donated prom dresses hang in All the King's Children Saturday during a fundraiser for the group. In addition to the donated dresses people were able to sell their new and gently used dresses at the event.
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The Olive Art Gallery, featuring jewelry, paintings and other items donated and on consignment, is open the first Saturday of ever month at All the King's Children's location in downtown Mount Olive.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Marcia Whitley talks to Kelly Lee about volunteer opportunities for her daughter at All the Kings Children.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
The All the King's Children logo hangs on the front of the Holmes House in downtown Mount Olive.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Second grade teacher and volunteer with All the King's Children Kelly Sumner helps Nisirr Council, 7, with his homework during a tutoring session at Rones Chapel. Nisirr and his two brothers are attending the tutoring sessions to help improve their performance in school.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Second grade teacher and volunteer with All the King's Children Kelly Sumner helps Nisirr Council, 7, with his homework during a tutoring session at Rones Chapel. Nisirr and his two brothers are attending the tutoring sessions to help improve their performance in school.
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Sisters Carolina, 17, and Odalis Diaz, 16, pick out dresses for the Southern Wayne High School prom at the "Say Yes to the Prom Dress" fundraiser at All the King's Children in Mount Olive on Saturday, Feb. 3.
A broken flip-flop. A crying child. Marcia Whitley knew she had to do something to help so she took the shoes off of her daughter's feet and gave them to the crying child.
The year Katie, her daughter, started kindergarten Whitley started teaching at Carver Elementary School where she had been on the Parent Teacher Student Organization.
She started with Title 1 small group reading.
She had a second grade homeroom the following year.
"I had a little girl in my class who broke her shoe," Whitley said. "She had on those, I call them shower shoes -- flip-flops. She was on her way to the bus, and they broke. She was so embarrassed. When those break there is really nothing that you can do to fix it."
Katie was wearing the same kind of shoes.
"I took her shoes off and stuck them on that little girl," Whitley said. "We walked to the bus. I carried mine out to the car in tears because I had given away her shoes. But now she would give you the shirt off of her back. That is who she is.
"I hope that is part of what she has learned -- that you do for others who don't have. That little girl impacted me a lot that year. She was just as sweet as she could be, but had a lot of trouble at school because so much was going on at home."
That included a new baby coming and three and four people to a bed, just "lots of issues," she said.
It was then that Whitley realized her passion for helping children in need.
She knew there was no need to re-invent the wheel or duplicate what others were doing. But what she did know was that she needed to do something to connect resources to children in need.
She took her first step with a program called Bless Your Sole in 2013.
Whitley made what she called shoe tickets around Christmas and sold them for $25 a piece to raise money.
"That was kind of the catalyst, I guess, for starting to collecting money," she said.
By February of 2014, Whitley decided to start a nonprofit.
The name All the King's Children came to her in a dream.
The logo is an egg nestled in a crown symbolizing putting the pieces back together.
All the King's Children was incorporated in March of that year and continues to evolve in what it does to find needed resources -- standing in the gap, trying to find who has what resources, she said.
Applications are taken year-round from pastors, teachers, social workers, school counselors and are handled on a case-by-case basis.
"What is your church offering, what is your group offering?" Whitley said. "What are you doing that we can help somehow, either raise funds so that we can continue to tutor or pay the light bill so we can have activities here. What can you do to help somebody who needs help?"
She quit her teaching job to run All the King's Children.
"I didn't see it being what it is today," she said. "It just continued to evolve as you see needs and learn about other people's programs or activities or what can we do. So I didn't see this (growth) at the time. It was just trying to figure out how we could help."
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Born in Massachusetts, Whitley's family moved to Gates County in northeastern North Carolina when she was 5 so that her father could look after his parents.
"That is one of those where the Yankees don't claim you and the Southerners don't either," she jokes.
Whitley attended N.C. State University where she received a degree in business management with a concentration in marketing in 1995.
It was while at N.C. State that she met her future husband, Chris, who was working with Carolina Turkeys (now Butterball) at the time.
They moved to Mount Olive and will be celebrating their 20th anniversary this year.
They have two children, Dylan, 16, a junior at Southern Wayne High School, and Katie, 13, an eighth-grader at Mount Olive Middle School.
Whitley was a stay-at-home mom after her son was born and started her own business, MW Designs.
"I did logos and cards and business cards and taking people's photographs and turning them into greeting cards," she said. "I ended up doing some contract work for Southern Bank.
"Somewhere in there, I decided I was going to go back and get my teaching certificate. I did that online through ECU. I got my kindergarten through sixth-grade teacher's license."
She did her student teaching in Fremont.
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"I spent a lot of time in the nurse's office and social worker's office my first year with a homeroom trying to figure out how do we help these children, what do we need to do?" she said.
Whitley learned more about what the nurse and social worker had to do as they struggled to help children with needs.
"Just seeing the different things that they were dealing with -- the shoes that were too big, the clothes that weren't fitting right, or (being) hungry," she said. "To watch them eat all that they can and want more and just knowing that they probably weren't going to eat again when they got home."
Also as a teacher, Whitley witnessed teachers buying supplies with their own money and doing what they could to help their students.
"So that kind of prompted the whole mission I guess -- just trying to figure out a way to help make people's lives easier who were trying to make a difference, trying to give every child any opportunity to be there and be able to pay attention and learn," she said.
"When you are so worried that someone is going to pick on you, all you do is spend all day picking on someone else. You can't get anything done. The teacher can't get anything done."
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Whitley recalls sitting in her Sunday school class looking out the window for a long time and then looking around the room at all the "educated and really smart folks" in that room.
"But at that time we cared about our kids," Whitley said. "Everybody was in the season of brand new children and trying to figure out how to take care of ourselves.
"But I just had that yearning that we should be doing more, that there is too much talent, too much education, there are so many resources sitting in this tiny room for us not trying to help."
It is important to instill that passion to help in future generations to carry on the mission, she said, which is why All the King's Children has a youth advisory board.
"That is part of what we need to happen," Whitley said. "It's got to come from those youths. They are the ones who have to follow up. They are the ones who have to see the need and continue to understand that it is important to help others."
Whitley said she thinks having lived it for so long that her children are more aware of the needs.
"They are always helping me," she said. "I am always putting them to work. They do whatever I ask them to help, and they are good at it. I think that they would help anybody.
"I don't think they would look past anybody because they don't have."
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Whitley said that her business background, the marketing and the education experience and the experience of actually being in the classroom gave her insight into what the needs really are.
"It is surprising how many people say, 'Not in Mount Olive. We don't have that here. They don't need food to go home or a backpack. That doesn't happen,'" she said.
A lot of people put on blinders, Whitley said.
They go to church, they go home, grocery store or wherever, and they don't pay attention or never see the need, she said.
Teachers are supposed to put on blinders because they are supposed to treat everyone the same, Whitley said.
"But you are going to see a lot of the needs when you are actually in it," she said. "I guess what fuels it (her passion to help) is that same basic need. That need has not gone away. And we keep adding things to what we are trying to accomplish.
"We got a little criticism when we first started about handouts and 'That's not solving the problem.' No, handouts don't necessarily solve the problem, but they give you an avenue or a way to make things more conducive to solving the problem, because if you haven't eaten or are busy worrying about your clothes not fitting or somebody is going to pick on you and those kinds of things."
She remembers one little boy who was sleeping on a pallet of stuffed animals because that was all grandma had when she got him.
"But if you make it a little bit easier for them to go to school and learn -- to be ready to be there, to be focused on what they are doing, then you have made it a little better," Whitley said. "So yeah, you have to do some of the handouts.
"They have to have their basic needs met. I think the fuel is just continuing to find ways to break that cycle -- how can we put resources in front of these kids who otherwise might not get them. There are so many things to do that we have not run out yet."
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She thinks the negative reactions people get when they work to serve others is because of blinders and people with the mindset of, "If I don't think about it, then I don't have to worry about it," she said.
"You know, 'I have a lot going on and am trying to make ends meet as it is, everybody is kind of struggling anyway,'" she said. "'If I don't really worry about what you are doing, then you just go ahead and do it.' If you are an adult and not taking care of yourself, then maybe there is an argument there.
"I think the one, maybe, saving grace that makes a difference with us is that it is for the kids. I think more people have more tolerance for that because it's not their fault. If somebody is not being taken care of and they are under the age of 18, there is obviously nothing they can do about it."
Whitley has not been the direct target of negative comments.
But she still takes the negativity personally, that she is not doing it the right way versus the way someone else thinks it should be done.
She recalls a conversation with someone talking about giving away food and backpacks.
The persons asked, "When are they ever going to work?"
"Again if you don't get an education, you are not even going to be able to work," she said. "There is nothing you can do if you don't get those basic elementary, secondary educations. It is not a valid argument when talking about children."
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She does get discouraged.
"That's on me, again, because I need to not take things so personally," Whitley said. "But when you try to put together an event and five people show up or you are trying to raise money and it trickles in. I see a lot of people see stuff on Facebook and everybody is buying it, but you are trying to raise money for kids and nobody wants it. Those are discouraging.
"But that is when I have to stop and look at (where) we are in our fourth year, and here we sit in this house. We have a space in Faison. We are helping in Rones Chapel at the community center -- all of these things that we are able to do."
And her mission all started in the back of her car.
She had so many Christmas presents in the back of her car that she could not go shopping for her children that first year.
Also, personal care kits were lined up on the hearth in the middle of her dinning room.
"I don't have that problem anymore," she said. "Every time we have outgrown something, somebody has stepped up."
For example, Best Used Cars provided a van.
Connie Wells, who owns the house on North Center Street where All the King's Children is located, knows what Whitley is trying to accomplish so she took the house off the market for two years for her use.
The owner of Main Street Salon in Faison also owns the adjoining building and told Whitley that if she would expand into Faison, she would make the building available.
"So, everything, if I just keep on remembering, look at what we were able to do, the rest of it doesn't matter -- somebody being negative, or thinking you are crazy, why are you doing this because, I don't get paid for doing this," she said.
"This is all voluntary, and it's just because it needs to be done. So you just take your lumps and keep on going because it needs to be done."
She spends the time needed to get the work done and enjoys it and does what it takes even when it is not enjoyable.
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Then there is always the case where everything that could done has been done, but still falls short.
"We just had one recently," Whitley said. "There is a girl who needs a tooth fixed. Her guardians are out of the country. I didn't know that when I found out that she was hurting. She doesn't want anybody to know, won't talk about it.
"But I guess a teacher noticed that she was in pain, but when you ask her, 'I'm fine. I'm fine.' We reached out to several different area places."
Some said they couldn't help, but then there is that one that says they can absolutely help, Whitley said.
An appointment was made, but Whitley was told to make sure the youth had a guardian present.
"Now, we have an appointment, and the guardian still has not come back to the area," Whitley said. "So here she is. There is nothing I can do. I have done everything that I can do. I can't take her. I would, and we planned to pay for it. Those are the tough ones, where you feel like you have done everything and everything is set right up. All you have to do is get them there.
"Parents have to be responsible. Guardians have to take that responsibility, and some still don't have the means to or -- just like this -- they are out of place or maybe they don't speak the language, and it's hard to communicate. Those are really our biggest challenges at this point."
On the other hand, there have been multiple occasions were everything just kind of fell into place, she said.
"You need a bed and all of sudden somebody texts you and says 'I have a mattress,' or 'I have a twin-size bed,'" Whitley said. "Things you have to have right at that minute, and here it comes."
Again, it is not about re-inventing the wheel or trying to take over programs.
"There are great people doing great works," she said. "All that we are trying to do is make sure that those folks who are struggling at school to serve these kids have the resources.
"I hope people know that what we are doing is not trying to take the credit for anything, but just trying to fill the gaps where they exist and making sure that people who need the resources get them."
For example, a Faison church conducted a summer feeding program, All the King's Children wanted to help raise money, not take over or take credit for it, she said.
Also, Habitat for Humanity has provided a voucher for items from its ReStore.
"So if somebody needs a bed, we can specify you are not going in to buy a TV, but you can buy a bed for your child or washing machine or something that you need," she said. "InJoy has done the same thing giving us vouchers. I think everybody has been very receptive (to forming partnerships). People have had suggestions of who we should partner with and what we should do."
For now her focus is on southern Wayne and northern Duplin counties, but she gets requests from other areas, too.
"We are just reaching a very small portion of people in the two counties," Whitley said.
Eventually she would like to see the area they service grow but has concerns about expanding until she has more help.
"But that will come, it always has," she said.
For more information, or to make a donation or volunteer call 919-252-KIDS (5437), visit allthekingschildren.org or All the King's Children Facebook page or send email to info@allthekings children.org.