SUMMERTON, S.C. — A Summerton woman is working to serve her community through a resource center. K&H Resource Center connects residents with organizations and help throughout the area.
"I love what I do," Kathleen Lawson Gibson said. "I'm passionate about what I do."
Gibson is spending her retirement as the founder and executive director of K&H Resource Center in Summerton after spending 40 years working in the Clarendon County School District, beginning right when she graduated high school. Gibson says she started as a teacher's assistant and continued to fill multiple roles for the district before going to the University of South Carolina to get her degree years later.
"I worked in the district for many years, but nothing is synonymous to doing what I do now," Gibson said. "This is powerful. This was an abandoned building, and I took my 401(k) and I restored it. And I want to bring resources to the community."
She's serving people like Deloris Brown and Emma Thomas.
"We love it! Love it," Brown and Thomas said. "So many people come here for information. It is so awesome."
The resource center helps residents with topics from applying to college programs, writing resumes, and teaching seniors about nutrition.
"They give us so much information, what we need to eat, how to eat it because sometimes we be eating the wrong thing and eating too much of it so we need," Brown said.
Gibson said she wants to meet the needs she sees in her community.
"How do I go back to school? How can I find a good job? How can I do things off my record? How can I write a resume? How can I do whatever…the answers are here at the center. I gave the children 40 years of my life, and whatever is left is going to go to my precious seniors," Gibson said, smiling. "When people ask me what I do or what's going on inside this building, I ask them, 'What do they want to see inside this building?' Because I have my hands in so many things. Whatever the needs are, if I don't have the answers, I know how to find answers."
She said working with older people is a mission Gibson feels particularly passionate about because of her mother.
"My mom died with [Alzheimer's] and so did her mom, and so I want to keep brain activation and brain stimulation going on with the older folks, so we do so much stuff," Gibson said.
K&H partners with local resources like the South Carolina State University 1890 Research and Extension Program. Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program Educator Inetta Cooper Fulton comes to the center every Tuesday at noon to host a free health and wellness session.
"K&H Resource Center is a catalyst for information and educational tools. Miss Gibson is tireless. She loves Summerton, she loves her people," Fulton said. "She is an extension of the extension! Because she is just, I mean, she's so energetic, you know, she's so…has a heart for the people. The people know her and love her as well. So to have her as was South Carolina State 1890 Research Extension, we are the ones that are fortunate."
Fulton explains that the extension program takes educational tools out to rural areas throughout the state to help address health disparities. Fulton is with the Santee Wateree Region with an office in Sumter, although the program serves the entire state with free programs.
"It's the lack of resources that causes [rural residents] to have, you know, stroke, heart attack, high blood pressure," Fulton said. "And its lack of education."
Gibson said she's fortunate to live out her passion: serving the community and inspiring others.
"Through my work, I've got so many awards, but they don't mean nothing to me. I want to be rewarded when I go to heaven. So the reward is so important. Awards are nice for people to think of me, but I want to be rewarded that I've done a good job helping people to be better people," Gibson said. "I'd love for my philosophy to be passed on to someone else. Each one reach one and pick one up. If that could just resonate in this community, aw man, what a world this would be if everybody would have the helping and the giving spirit. Our motto is to give you hope, and then we give you help."
This passion for serving the community comes from her father, who's responsible for the 'H' in the K&H Resource Center.
"I hope he's looking down at me smiling because I'm real serious about this," Gibson said. "Really, really serious."
For more information on how to access the resources provided by the center, message K&H on Facebook. To contact South Carolina State University's extension program, visit SCSU.edu.