Correspondent photo / Sean Barron Rose Carter, executive director of the Alliance for the Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods (ACTION), organizes a rack of women’s clothing at ACTION’s new headquarters on the North Side.

YOUNGSTOWN — Rose Carter has dedicated much of her life to caring for individuals — something that expanded to taking care of her community.

“I’ve been doing it 14 years now,” Carter, 79, who grew up on Youngstown’s East Side, said.

The 1961 graduate of The Rayen School was referring to time spent with the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods (ACTION) organization, for which she serves as executive director. Before that, she worked as a nurse.

ACTION is a grassroots community organization under which are many programs aimed at creating safer communities, promoting racial equity and inclusion, improving people’s lives via education, and reducing hunger and poverty, as well as protecting vulnerable citizens from abandonment, predatory lending practices and other ills.

She also is celebrating ACTION’s recent move to its Gypsy Lane location.

Though Carter is a lifelong Youngstown resident, that doesn’t mean she was devoid of expansive travels and moves.

Carter got married shortly after having graduated from high school, then she lived three years in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, because her husband, Leonard, was stationed nearby in the U.S. Air Force before he became one of Ohio’s first black state troopers. In Maine, Carter attended the Bangor School of Nursing before the couple moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she spent three years caring for Eskimos in the area.

After going through three long, dark and cold winters in Fairbanks, Carter and her husband moved to East Meridian, N.Y., where they lived for about 18 months.

After her divorce, Carter returned to the Mahoning Valley, then attended Youngstown State University, though she knew she would have to find work, Carter remembered.

“I needed a job, so I got a job at Dollar Bank as a teller, then I moved up to Second National Bank and worked in processing,” she said.

Those two experiences soon led to a 23-year career as a loan officer at First Place Bank before she retired from the banking industry, Carter continued.

During her career, Carter witnessed what she felt were certain unfair practices such as redlining, so she and a few others formed an entity called the Community Reinvestment Association, in part because she “saw things that were not for our people of color,” she explained.

Carter may have retired from banking, but she was anything but idle.

Pat Rosenthal, CommonWealth Inc.’s founder and executive director, asked her to join ACTION. The move prompted Carter to embark on yet another piece of traveling: this time to Chicago to receive special training in community organizing from the Gamaliel Foundation, a community-based organization founded in 1968.

ACTION continues to be a work in progress, as it tries to respond to sometimes shifting community needs, along with others that continue to adversely affect residents’ quality of life. For example, the organization has been pushing for a brick-and-mortar, full-service grocery store in Youngstown to address what many see as longtime food insecurities.

Even though no such store has been built in the city limits, ACTION has been on the front lines of creating pop-up markets, then taking it another step forward.

“We realized there are a lot of seniors on disability, and we said, ‘Let’s have a grocery store on wheels,'” Carter explained, referring to vehicles, known as mobile markets, that travel throughout the city selling fresh produce, fruits, vegetables and other foods.

Since May, more than 4,000 people have benefited from the idea, she estimated. Carter noted that her organization also has joined forces with the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership.

Similarly, an estimated 200 people have received hot meals weekly; in addition, more than 80 men and women per week take cooking classes that have been set up virtually, Carter continued.

In addition, Carter, along with Elisa Hosey and Lola Simmons, started a re-entry program called Home for Good, inside the First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown on Wick Avenue that offers referrals for housing, employment and other essential necessities to citizens returning to society after serving time in prison.

Along those lines, the three of them have set up clothing ministries at the Community Corrections Association, Trumbull Correctional Institution in Leavittsburg and the Ohio State Penitentiary, for which they received an award, Carter noted.

Also, her daughter, Taunya Scott, runs Dress for Success, in the basement of ACTION’s new headquarters. That effort gives donated clothing, shoes, toiletries and other basic essentials to returning citizens, she explained.

ACTION also is continuing to tackle predatory lending, Carter said, adding that she and a busload of people traveled to South Carolina to confront such a lender who owned several properties in Youngstown. Eventually, the city passed an ordinance against the practice.

ACTION and Dress for Success will host an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 7 at their new site, 435 Gypsy Lane, on the North Side. It will include a ribbon cutting, COVID-19 and flu vaccines, a clothing giveaway and refreshments.

Carter has two daughters, Scott and Lenda West; five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

To suggest a Saturday profile, contact Features Editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.

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