Our founder, Cedrick Parker, started Adventist Community Restoration Center in 2019, but its origin story begins in 1999. That year, as a young man living in Greensboro, he experienced a loss that would have a significant impact on his values, his goals and his career. 

In 1999, he lost a childhood friend to gun violence. His friend was unfortunately labeled as just another statistic. Another young black man from a broken home in a broken community. Another young black man taken too soon from an environment that never gave him a fair chance. Experiencing this, Cedric started to make observations and ask questions.

What if there were programs to help keep him and his friends off the streets? Would his friend still be alive? What if there were access to resources that they heard about in other communities, but never actually got to experience? What if there were mentoring organizations or the funds to start a local basketball league? Would his friend still be alive? 

All of these“What If’s,” with no answer in sight, helped to form a determination that he would not let things be this way for the next generation. His community deserved better. 

In 2013, there was an incident that put the entire community on notice and began to help Cedric begin to envision a greater impact he could have on the community as an adult. In the summer of 2013, what started as a fight between teenagers in downtown Greensboro turned into an episode of gunshots being fired. The community came to the conclusion that this issue of controlling our community was no longer just a law enforcement issue, but instead a community issue. It was time for the community to take the initiative and be the change it wanted to see. 

Working passionately since the loss of his childhood friend and the incident in 2013, Cedric made a decision to have an even larger impact. In 2019, he founded Adventist Community Restoration Center. An organization whose purpose is to restore urban neighborhoods and communities into places of opportunity and prosperity. His years of support helped lead him to taking this leadership role and the community has reaped those benefits. 

Standing strong on its four pillars of Character & Leadership Development, Economic Empowerment, Educational Advancement, and Health & Wellness, Adventist Community Restorations is only scratching the surface of instituting long-term transformation in the Greensboro community.

In only one year, Adventist Community Restoration Center has had a significant impact on the community. We have tackled food insecurity, the lack of quality education and jobs, improving access to better health outcomes, and providing better youth programs. 

We are motivated not by what’s wrong with the community, but instead what’s strong in our community. Every day we interact with the community, we are enlightened by their potential. Potential they can reach if given access to the right opportunities. We are able to see this potential because we don’t view the community we serve as clients in our organization. We see them as citizens in a community that when working and serving together, can achieve anything and we want to be with them every step of the way.

We see first hand, their dedication, resilience, creativity, their overall love for their community and, pride in their culture. These are the qualities of a community committed to each other and committed to transformation. Transformation we hope to continue to bring for years to come.

With every conversation and every new initiative, Adventist Community Restoration Center is one step closer to achieving our mission of bringing the much-needed resources that will restore fractured lives, rebuild broken communities and renew hope for a better tomorrow.