Local News

Kutz for Kids is transforming youth empowerment

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Tuesday, 15 September 2026

Written by Katie Herring

When a child feels confident in their appearance, it reshapes how they engage with the world. Good self-esteem builds courage, fosters healthier relationships, and drives academic persistence. Yet, for many families navigating financial hardship, non-essential personal care—such as regular haircuts—often falls by the wayside.
What began as a simple realization about confidence and dignity has evolved into one of the nation's most comprehensive youth-support initiatives: Kutz for Kids.
The story of Kutz for Kids starts with the Marcus Harris Foundation, founded in 2018. After spending years volunteering across a spectrum of non-profit organizations, founder Marcus Harris recognized a profound gap in existing community services. While traditional charities offered essential aid, he realized there was much more he could do to address systemic barriers to opportunity and work to break cycles of intergenerational poverty.
This drive led to a suite of targeted community programs under the foundation's umbrella:
• Neighborfood Express: A direct response to local food insecurity, providing nutritious food to underserved families.
• Project ClassAct: An initiative dedicated to supporting teachers in Title I schools, helping them secure essential classroom resources such as iPads and other educational technology.
• Bridging the Digital Divide: Partnering with organizations like Charlotte-based E2D (Eliminating the Digital Divide) and Cramerton Institute to distribute free technology to students in need.
• Robert B. Harris Memorial Scholarship Program: Rewarding young scholar-activists committed to fostering positive social change.
• Christmas Smiles Drive: Providing gifts and holiday cheer to children fleeing abusive homes.
Sustaining these multifaceted efforts requires deep community roots. The foundation operates primarily through a combination of grants, strategic business partnerships, and individual donations.
In the late summer of 2019, amidst widespread news coverage highlighting back-to-school drives offering free school supplies and seasonal haircuts, Harris asked a critical question: What if, instead of a one-time back-to-school event, children had access to free haircuts all year round?
That spark launched Kutz for Kids, which quickly became the foundation’s flagship program. Backed by vital grant funding, including support from organizations like the Florence Rogers Charitable Trust, the program expanded rapidly.
Rather than operating in isolation, Kutz for Kids partners with licensed barbers and local community organizations to meet families where they were, delivering a consistent sense of dignity and care.
What makes Kutz for Kids unique isn't just the grooming; it's the holistic framework built around it. Instead of stopping at a haircut, Kutz for Kids uses each session as a touchpoint to evaluate a student's broader range of needs. The program connects kids and their families directly to necessary social services, offering case management, mental health resources, tutoring, and career mentorship.
Since the program’s beginning, areas in which they serve have seen significant decreases in juvenile justice system involvement and increases in academic performance as well as civic engagement. The program is not just about helping kids look good; it’s about taking care of as many essential needs as possible to set them up for success.
Kutz for Kids operates in communities all over the country and now has expanded its reach into North Carolina, specifically in the Fayetteville and Cumberland County area.
These wraparound services operate through robust referral pipelines and agency relationships, including partnerships with local agencies such as the Department of Social Services and Cumberland County Social Services.
They also work directly with school social workers, counselors, and educators who identify at-risk youth. In some cases, they connect through direct outreach, allowing families to contact the foundation directly to get connected to appropriate support services without red tape.
By pairing immediate personal dignity with long-term social support, Kutz for Kids turns a simple haircut into a gateway for life-changing intervention. By addressing food security, digital access, classroom resources, and social health simultaneously, the Marcus Harris Foundation ensures that underserved youth receive the comprehensive foundation they need to thrive.
For more information, visit https://marcusharrisfoundation.org/kutz-for-kids

Open door to recovery: Myrover-Reese celebrates 65 Years

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Tuesday, 15 September 2026

Written by Jamie Bishop

More than 23 years ago, Amyn Abduk-Khaliq arrived at Myrover-Reese Recovery Homes as a homeless veteran searching for a fresh start.
He found more than shelter. With structure, guidance and people willing to stand beside him, Abduk-Khaliq built a life in recovery. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, served Fayetteville State University for 15 years and retired in 2024. He continued working in the community and in recovery programs. In August, he was elected to the Myrover-Reese board of directors.
His return from resident to caretaker of the mission is the kind of homecoming that cannot be captured by an occupancy number.
Myrover-Reese will celebrate its 65th anniversary and National Recovery Month from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, at 560 Wilkes Road in Fayetteville. The free, drop-in gathering will include a live band, food trucks, games, a bounce house and opportunities to explore the grounds.
“Everybody is invited to come out,” said Melissa Reid, the organization’s resource development coordinator. “We just want people to come and look at the campus.”
Visitors can see a side of Myrover-Reese that is easy to miss from the road: wooded acreage, a nature trail, a greenhouse and places designed to make reflection and healthy routines part of daily living. Residents’ rooms and identities will remain private. Recovery requires community, but it also deserves dignity.
“It’s a very serene, beautiful campus,” Reid said.
The peaceful setting serves a serious mission: to provide a safe, supportive and structured environment for people seeking recovery from alcohol and other drugs. The organization operates residential programs for men and women and has the capacity to house 42 people. Its services include 24-hour supervision, substance-use and relapse-prevention education, connections to outpatient treatment, peer-support meetings and help preparing for employment, education, and independent housing.
The work began in 1961, when North Carolina communities had few formal options for people leaving treatment and trying to rebuild their lives. Jimmy Myrover and Pat Reese, two local men in recovery, joined members of Alcoholics Anonymous in establishing what the organization describes as the state’s first halfway house for recovering alcoholics.
“We had no money, just a lot of love and faith,” Reese once said, according to the organization’s history.
Fayetteville answered with food and donations during the home’s fragile first years. The organization took the Myrover-Reese name in 1971 to honor its founders. What began in one house grew into a network rooted in local families, volunteers, and donors. The names carried by its homes reflect those enduring community ties.
“Sixty-five years here in this community is a testimonial to the work that they do,” Reid said.
Today, two men’s homes on the Wilkes Road campus serve veterans and civilians. A women’s program operates in the historic Fellowship Home in the Massey Hill neighborhood. A new women’s residence is being built on the main campus, with completion anticipated by the end of the year, Reid said.
The move will place women closer to shared services and the larger recovery community while creating room to rethink how the existing house can support the next stage of independent living. A grant from the Women’s Giving Circle will help furnish the new home’s kitchen and interior spaces.
Myrover-Reese also works closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans can receive case management and referrals for medical and dental care, education, employment, legal needs and housing. Those practical connections matter because sobriety is not sustained by determination alone. A safe address, a job, health care, and trustworthy people can become the scaffolding around a new life.
The greenhouse and Veggies for Vets effort add another layer to that support. Developed with Off-Road Outreach, the project is intended to bring fresh produce, purposeful work, and service together. The anniversary gathering will give guests a closer look at the greenhouse and the campus nature trail.
Community support also comes through the Myrover-Reese Thrift Store at 1336 Clinton Road. Reid said store revenue helps sustain the recovery programs. Shoppers can find furniture, clothing, household goods, books, and other donated merchandise. People can help by shopping, volunteering or donating usable items; the store also offers donation pickup.
The organization welcomes financial gifts and frequently needs toiletries, twin bedding, cleaning supplies, paper products and nonperishable food. Volunteers can also share practical skills, including reading, writing and basic computer instruction.
Those contributions keep open a door that has stood for 65 years. Behind it are people doing the slow, courageous work of rebuilding trust, routines, and hope.
Abduk-Khaliq once walked through that door needing help. Now he has returned to help guide it. His journey gives the anniversary its clearest meaning: Recovery is not the end of a person’s story. Given time, support, and a place to begin again, it can become the chapter from which everything else is written.
For more information, to seek services or to support Myrover-Reese Recovery Homes, visit mrrh.org or call 910-779-1306.

Resource he once needed: Johnny Wilson’s years of service

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Tuesday, 15 September 2026

Written by Jamie Bishop

Before Johnny Wilson became a resource for thousands of people in Cumberland County, he was a boy watching his grandmother make something out of almost nothing.
She raised him on a farm without indoor plumbing. Some meals came from fish they caught or berries they picked. Money was scarce, and keeping food on the table came before watching Wilson play basketball or football.
Still, she gave.
She cooked for neighbors and church gatherings. If she had $5, she could not spare, Wilson remembered, she would find a way to give someone $1.
“We didn’t have anything to give, and my grandmother still gave,” he said.
That lesson became the quiet inheritance behind Wilson’s 27 years at Fayetteville Urban Ministry, where he now serves as president and chief executive officer. He sees its work not as charity performed at a distance, but as one neighbor recognizing another.
Fayetteville Urban Ministry’s mission is “to show God’s compassion for our neighbors in need and thus build our community together.” Wilson’s life gives those words a face. He knows what it means to need a dependable adult, a meal or an opportunity.
“I aspire to be everything that I did not have,” Wilson has said. “I want to be a resource to any and everyone.”
Wilson came to Fayetteville in 1995 to attend Methodist College, now Methodist University. He studied criminal justice and was fascinated by the system, but he understood something important about himself before graduation.
“I knew I didn’t want to lock people up,” he said.
He wanted to reach young people before a poor decision hardened into a record. Wilson volunteered as a mentor in the ministry’s Find-A-Friend program. After graduation, the organization offered him a position working with children.
“I just knew I wanted to make a difference,” he said.
What began with one mentor and one child grew into a career spanning the ministry’s four core programs: Find-A-Friend, Emergency Assistance, the Adult Literacy and Education Center and the Nehemiah Project.
Find-A-Friend provides mentoring and enrichment for young people. Emergency Assistance offers food, clothing, and other resources. The Adult Literacy and Education Center helps people strengthen reading skills, prepare for high school equivalency exams, learn English, or pursue citizenship. The Nehemiah Project mobilizes volunteers for critical home repairs.
Different doors lead into the ministry, but dignity is meant to meet people at each one. Wilson said the programs serve more than 15,000 people annually, free of charge.
Keeping that promise while expanding the organization is among his proudest achievements.
“As long as I’m here, and as long as the board will allow me to be here, all the services we provide will continue to be free,” he said.
Wilson points to the Manning Family Find-A-Friend Youth Enrichment Center as proof of what a committed community can accomplish. The building rose from open ground and, he said, was paid off before the final brick was laid through support from individuals and foundations.
“That’s more than legendary,” Wilson said. “It showed the relationships that we cultivated.”
Compassion requires more than good intentions. It needs tutors, mentors, repair crews, pantry volunteers and donors. It also needs careful stewardship. Wilson said annual audits have consistently shown that 86 cents to more than 90 cents of every donated dollar support program and direct services. The latest figure he cited was more than 88 cents.
Wilson has received the Key and Coin to the City of Fayetteville, the Greater Fayetteville Chamber’s Public Service Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fayetteville-Cumberland Human Relations Commission, among other honors.
The honors make him bashful. His own measure is simpler.
“Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do?” he said.
Wilson completed 27 years with the ministry on Aug. 23. Asked what people should remember about his leadership; he turned the attention outward. Anyone with shelter, food, clean clothes and an income, he said, has an opportunity and responsibility to encourage someone else.
“Find your why,” he said. “Get involved.”
Community members can give, volunteer individually, organize a workplace or church service day, mentor a child, help an adult learner, or join a home-repair project. Wilson said first-time volunteers often arrive unaware of the ministry’s reach. Then they serve beside others, and their view widens.
“Johnny, I had no idea,” he hears them say. “I had no idea this place exists and y’all do all of this.”
Wilson believes service interrupts the tunnel vision of busy lives. It reminds people who helped them and what earlier generations sacrificed. Everyone has a schedule, he said, but “you make time for your passionate things.”
For Wilson, that passion is rooted in memory: a grandmother whose cupboard was not full, but whose hand remained open. She showed him that generosity is measured by what someone is willing to share when another person needs it more.
Twenty-seven years later, Wilson is still sharing that inheritance, one young person, one learner, one family and one repaired home at a time.
To volunteer, donate or learn more about Fayetteville Urban Ministry’s programs, visit fayurbmin.org or call 910-483-5944. The ministry is located at 701 Whitfield St. in Fayetteville.

(Photo: Johnny Wilson celebrates 27 years with Fayetteville Urban Ministry this year. His dedication and service to the Cumberland County community are commendable. Photo courtesy of Johnny Wilson)

Chemours to pay $455 million for Fayetteville Works pollution

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Tuesday, 15 September 2026

Written by Lisa Sorg, Morgan Casey & Paul Woolverton, CityView Today

North Carolina and a handful of local governments agreed to settle with Chemours over its pollution in the eastern part of the state, the parties announced on Thursday.
The company will pay the state and 11 entities near its Fayetteville Works plant on the border of Cumberland and Bladen counties $455 million over the next 15 years for what the company said in a press release involved both the plant and “claims of PFAS contamination unrelated to that site.”
The state will receive $75 million of the $455 million while the local entities will share $380 million, with payment beginning this year. It’s the largest environmental damage payment in the history of North Carolina.
PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of forever chemicals found in water, soil, and homes near the plant. Exposure to the chemicals is linked to an increased risk of cancer, thyroid disease, reproductive problems and developmental delays in children, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Ten local governments were involved in the settlement: Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Cumberland, New Hanover, Robeson and Sampson counties, as well as the town of Wrightsville Beach, city of Lumberton, and village of Bald Head Island. The Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority also joined the settlement.
After the press conference, Cumberland County said it will receive $161.5 million from the settlement. Robeson County announced on social media its portion will be $22.8 million, including $2.3 million in the first year. Bald Head Island will receive $5.7 million, Mayor Peter Quinn told residents in an email.
The agreement also resolves the state’s lawsuit against Chemours, which was scheduled to be heard before the North Carolina Supreme Court this week.
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson valued the settlement at $590 million to include the additional $135 million that DuPont, Chemours’ former parent company, has to put into a reserve fund to meet the terms of a 2019 consent order the companies have with the state. If Chemours goes bankrupt during the payment period, the state will receive the entire settlement and the reserve fund, Jackson said.
Jackson told The Assembly and Inside Climate News there was a risk of Chemours going bankrupt during litigation. The company is currently valued at $2.28 billion. It is already required to pay $875 million to New Jersey over the next 25 years. Jackson said the settlement agreement’s reserve fund ensures the state and local entities will get paid as it puts DuPont on the hook for if Chemours goes under during the payment period.
“They wouldn’t be in this position if they hadn’t massively damaged the state and then lied about it for years,” Jackson said Sept. 10 at the site of a water cleanup effort in the Gray’s Creek community in Cumberland County. The community’s private wells were contaminated by Chemours’ chemicals and the county is expanding municipal water connections to provide residents clean drinking water.
Chemours Cites ‘Substantial Investments’ Reducing PFAS
Earlier this summer, Jackson, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson, and Gov. Josh Stein denounced an agreement between Chemours and the EPA to settle the state’s claims that the company violated federal drinking and environmental protections. That deal brings about $2 million per year to North Carolina to address water pollution, 20 times less than what the state’s settlement obtained.
“We were hoping that the EPA would take this seriously, but they failed,” Jackson said in his announcement. “They did a slap on the wrist for these companies.”
About 3.5 million North Carolinians, roughly one in every three, drink water with PFAS levels above the federal health standards, Wilson told a crowd of local government officials and members of the media gathered in Gray’s Creek.
Chemours said in its press release the state’s settlement agreement acknowledges the “substantial investments to significantly reduce PFAS emissions from Fayetteville Works and mitigate off-site impacts in the surrounding communities.” North Carolina has already forced Chemours to spend nearly $1.2 billion on clean-up efforts across the state, Wilson said, including filtration systems on private wells and treatment systems at its Fayetteville facility.
Local entities have full discretion on how to use their settlement funds, Jackson said, as many have already spent millions on addressing the forever chemicals.
In August, two elementary schools in Gray’s Creek were connected to the Fayetteville Public Works Commission water system through a $12 million project to provide safe drinking water. In March, PWC approved a $133.7 million contract to build a granular activated carbon filtration system at its two water treatment plants that serve much of Cumberland County.
Neighboring Robeson County is piloting a carbon filtration system at its Rocco Treatment Plant in St. Pauls after months of residents complaining about PFAS contamination in their water. David Edge, chair of the Robeson County Board of Commissioners, said its settlement dollars will help pay for the filtration system and other yet to be determined cleanup efforts.
“This settlement can make a difference for generations if we make responsible decisions about what comes next,” Kirk deViere, chair of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, told the crowd. “Our work now moves from the courtroom to the community. Our commitment has not and will not change: We will protect our communities. We will pursue every resource available, and we will build, and we will not stop until our community has the clean, safe, regulated drinking water it deserves.”
The settlement agreement, which deViere said local leaders have already signed, doesn’t stop others from suing Chemours for damages. The state can also take Chemours to court if they violate the agreement, Wilson said.

UC&W Editor's Note: This article has been edited for space. To read the article in full, visit https://bit.ly/4imxW8W