A longtime employee of the Anson County Partnership for Children was honored for her service during a Smart Start event May 4.
Lily “Bonnie” Robinson Morgan was awarded the Stephanie Fanjul National Smart Start Conference Scholarship Award in Greensboro.
All Partnership employees as well as Partnership board members John Witherspoon, Lula Jackson and Thomasina Montgomery attended the conference.
Staff members with 15 or more years of service in a Smart Start Partnership in North Carolina were eligible for the award. Morgan was nominated by Elaine B. Scarborough, executive director of the Partnership.
“Every Smart Start Partnership would be blessed to have an employee like Bonnie Morgan on staff,” Scarborough said.
Morgan has been employed by the Partnership since February 1999. She began her service at the Partnership as a childcare resource and referral technical assistant in 1999. She has held many positions at the Partnership, including serving as a childcare resource and referral parent/provider assistant, parenting coordinator, adolescent parenting program coordinator, literacy coordinator, early childhood resource center coordinator; and community outreach and literacy coordinator.
In each position, Morgan provided “dedicated, passionate service to young children and families in Anson County, always going above and beyond her job description,” according to the Partnership. In her various roles at the Partnership, Morgan has provided technical assistance to child care providers and to parents seeking high quality child care and to clients of the Early Childhood Resource Center. In her role as the adolescent parenting coordinator for seven years, Morgan provided intensive parenting services to teen mothers and their children, using the Parents as Teachers curriculum. She responded to their needs by phone, by text and in person at all hours of the day and night and is still affectionately known as “Miss Bunny” by those participants.
In her current role as the community outreach and literacy coordinator, Morgan coordinates the Partnership’s literacy programs, including Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, Raising a Reader, Reach Out and Read, book distributions and ReadyRosie. She facilitates the Partnership’s community events, including the Child Abuse Pinwheel Garden, Week of the Young Child celebration, Visit with Santa and all literacy events. Morgan also serves as the chairperson of food and volunteers for the Partnership’s annual fundraiser, the Barn Blast.
While working at the Anson County Partnership for Children, Morgan went back to school to complete her associate degree, followed by her bachelor’s degree in human services. Morgan is known in the community as a resource when families are in need or for community projects, according to the Partnership. She is also a lay pastor, elder and active member of First Presbyterian Church of Wadesboro and has served on the Charlotte Presbytery. She is also a board member of the Anson Women’s League.
The Anson County Partnership for Children is a non-profit public/private organization formed in 1996 in response to the North Carolina Smart Start initiative. The Partnership’s mission is “helping to make Anson County a better place to be a child and to raise a child.”
For more information on the Partnership, contact executive director Elaine Scarborough at 704-694-4036 or elaine.scarborough@ansonchildren.org, or visit www.ansonchildren.org.
Leave a Reply