Community Impact | Real voices from the Furman community
Shaping communities through RISE
Gabrielle Harvey ’27
As a RISE intern with Greenville Together, Harvey was involved in the foundational stages of nonprofit development, designing outreach efforts and a strategic marketing plan to help address homelessness in the community. As an aspiring attorney, the internship helped her develop communication and critical thinking skills to create impactful and effective messaging to educate Greenville residents about homelessness.
“Hearing from members of the Lived Experience Council shaped the tone and direction of my entire project, reminding me of the real lives and stories at the heart of our work. The experience also pushed me to ask myself how I can use my future legal profession to help vulnerable communities get access to the necessary resources needed to live a dignified life.”
Harvesting change together
Topsoil Farm + Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities
Topsoil Farm founder Wendy Lynam partners with Furman to connect sustainability, food, and community resilience through the Three Sisters Dinner, an annual event that raises funds to support local conservation and demonstrate how sustainable practices can reinforce the health of people and the planet.
Shi “provides academic and historical context, while Topsoil offers the culinary expertise and a platform to bring these ingredients to our community.”
Challenging history, examining justice
Elizabeth Robeson ’79
Alumna and writer Elizabeth Robeson uses her voice to confront hard truths about South Carolina’s history of racism, violence, and injustice. Writing for The Nation, her work exemplifies how Furman alumni carry forward our mission of engaging critically with the past to forge a more just future.
In an article about the names listed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., Robeson noted: “Of the 378 South Carolinians on the wall, well over a third died under the Redeemer (a movement in the post-Civil War South) and Jim Crow regimes; they include Klansmen, lynch leaders, chain gang guards, extortionists, and murderers. Perhaps a dozen died heroic deaths.”