2024 Remarkable Women: Donna Lee Reed
CHARLOTTE (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Back in November, Queen City News and its parent company, Nexstar, launched a campaign to feature remarkable women in our area throughout this month. We asked you to tell us about the remarkable women in your life, and you answered!
What does “home” mean to you? Is it family? Mom and Dad? Comfort, good food? All things that Pastor Donna Lee Reed was born without, and that too many teenagers and young adults are still without today. But Donna and her organization are here for them.
Donna is the Founder and Executive Director of Home 4 Me, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping teens who are aging out of foster care. Because once they turn 18, their resources end.
Donna explains, “If they don’t have a place, plan or parents, then they become homeless and hopeless. And that is the thing we are determined to avoid.”
This determination was born out of her own experience. Donna was abandoned in the hospital at birth and spent time in an orphanage. She was later taken in by a loving couple, who provided a childhood full of love and opportunities.
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Once she turned 18, Donna picked up and moved out. She was married with three babies by the time she turned 22. But it was an abusive marriage.
Donna recalls the moment she had an epiphany.
“So one of the things I did know, was that it was not the life I wanted. So now I’ve got three babies, and literally, I know I need to get out of this. And he literally was so abusive that he almost took me out one night. And I prayed and cried and asked him not to do it in front of my kids.”
She found the courage to leave, and at age 23, became a single parent on welfare. But that determination she was raised with was still there.
College soon followed, and she made money by selling her own arts and crafts on the weekends. It was a lot to take on with three kids, and Donna soon realized that she needed support.
She got the support she needed by talking to other women, but a surprising thing happened. They started seeking support from her.
“The thing was,” Donna says, “with the creativity, with the knowledge that I had, with the desire that I had to be successful, I would always share with them—you can do this as well. If I can do this, you can do this.”
Donna and her kids moved to Charlotte in 1995. It was only natural that she would pass on those same skills to her kids, their friends, and eventually, kids in foster care and Home 4 Me.
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Donna shares their mission —“If we take young people and we let them know that we love them and that we care, if we develop their skills and talents, show them how to become entrepreneurs, how to use those skills in a positive way, they wouldn’t have time to be out here doing negative things.”
Longtime friend Judith Bentley is also on the Home 4 Me Board of Directors. She’s seen the impact Donna has had on the kids.
“They know that we’re going to go to the bat for them, because these are people that don’t normally have anybody that goes to bat for them. And we go in the trenches with them. We go on the hike with them when it’s time for them to soar. She’s a mom, she’s a grandma, she’s an auntie, and sometimes she’s just a friend.”
Everyone is treated like family at Home 4 Me, like Dylan, a student at Livingstone College in Salisbury. He grew up in the foster care system, and didn’t think college was for him.
“Ever since I’ve been there,” Dylan says, “there’s been opportunities higher and higher for me. I never thought they would’ve been like this.”
Real-life granddaughter Tionna Lee Reed attends Livingstone College, where she mentors those incoming foster kids.
She’s following in the footsteps of her grandmother, and she couldn’t be more proud. People tell her all the time about the impact Donna has made in their lives.
“All they can say is, she helped me with this, she did this for us, she did that, she did this, and I was like… wow. That’s what I wanna do, that’s who I wanna be, and that’s what I’m becoming.”
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Friend Gretchen Smith nominated Donna for the Remarkable Women campaign—one of the easiest things she’s done.
Gretchen explains, “When you see someone that has such a passion for what they do, then you wanna celebrate them. But you also want everyone to celebrate because of what you see—and celebrate her as well.”
Home 4 Me was recently named the 2024 Nonprofit of the Year by Pride Magazine, Charlotte’s African-American magazine. If you’d like to get involved or donate to Home 4 Me, you can go to their website, home4me.org.
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