For Maggie, three words say almost everything there is to say about IMPACT Forward: “I belong here.”
At 30, Maggie has lived with hearing loss since childhood. At IMPACT Forward, she loves dancing, sports, animals, working with clay, and trying new things. But when asked what she likes most about the program, Maggie doesn’t start with the activities.
“I like to be here, see all my friends,” she said. “It really helps me so much to be here, helps me learn new skills.”
Then she gets to the heart of it: “I belong here.”
That sense of belonging is at the center of IMPACT Forward, a psychosocial rehabilitation program operated by IMPACT of the Piedmont at the Farmington Community Center.
The program is giving adults living with mental health challenges a place to build friendships, develop coping and independent living skills, prepare for employment, give back to their community and rediscover abilities they may have thought were lost.
But just over a year after opening, IMPACT Forward faces a challenge of its own.
The program needs more referrals and increased community support to become financially sustainable. Without them, a program already changing lives could be at risk of closing.
Filling a Gap in Mental Health Services
IMPACT of the Piedmont has served people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for 48 years. In recent years, Executive Director Julie Wood said the organization began recognizing another significant gap in the community: a lack of structured daytime services for adults living with serious mental health challenges.
IMPACT Forward was created in response.
The program began in July 2025 and operates Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Farmington Community Center. IMPACT Forward Director Anna Bowman said the program helps participants improve their overall well-being while reducing the likelihood of mental health crises and hospitalization.
Bowman leads IMPACT Forward alongside CJ Wall Jr. and Caleb Lumpkin, direct support professionals who work closely with participants each day. Together, the three-person team provides the support, encouragement and structure that make the program possible.
Participants work on coping strategies, nutrition, exercise, medication management, independent living and pre-vocational skills. They cook together, create art, exercise, volunteer, take community outings and practice the skills needed to navigate everyday life.
But that list doesn’t fully capture what happens there.
“The people that we serve, they’re like anybody else, and they deserve the same opportunities,” Bowman said. “Sometimes people just need a helping hand to get to the next step.”
Matthew Is Working Toward His Next Step
For 22-year-old Matthew, that next step includes a job.
He hopes to eventually work in a clerical position, so Bowman gives him opportunities to practice office skills—sorting papers, putting things away, shredding documents, and handling other tasks that build confidence and workplace experience.
He also cooks. Through IMPACT Forward, Matthew has tried foods and recipes that were unfamiliar to him, including minestrone soup, fettuccine Alfredo, and yellow rice. Now he eats them at home.
It’s a seemingly small example of something IMPACT Forward strives to accomplish every day: helping participants develop skills that carry beyond the program and into their lives.
More Than Activities
The IMPACT Forward calendar can be busy.
Participants regularly exercise through the Davie County YMCA’s “Let’s Get Fit” program and participate in fitness activities. IMPACT of the Piedmont staffers Reba Moore-Gonzalez, licensed recreational therapist, and Katrina Taylor provide monthly recreational activities and computer classes. Community volunteers Sue Boggs and Kyla Glover introduce them to art and pottery at an art studio generously shared by Sugar Valley Airport. Alma Pendergast visits weekly to play games. They visit the library, as well as recreation facilities and parks where they enjoy activities such as swimming and picnics.
They also volunteer.
IMPACT Forward participants have given their time to organizations such as A Storehouse for Jesus, Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels, Footprints Farm, and the animal shelter. Community partnerships have opened doors for experiences in art, cooking, and other activities.
Those outings and volunteer opportunities aren’t simply ways to fill six hours. They help participants practice social and vocational skills, discover interests and recognize that they have something valuable to contribute.
“They love giving back,” Wood said. “They love the volunteering. They love being a part of the community.”
Bowman has watched that sense of possibility grow. One participant was so withdrawn when she first met him that he barely spoke. “When I first met him, he wouldn’t say a word to me,” she recalled. Today, she describes him as a “social butterfly.” At an IMPACT Forward talent show, the young man who had once struggled to engage with others stood before an audience and sang.
Those transformations don’t always happen quickly or dramatically. Sometimes they look like joining a conversation, trying a new food, or agreeing to attend an outing. Sometimes they look like friendship. Friendship through community becomes part of the healing. That community isn’t built on the idea that one group gives and another receives.
Maggie is a perfect example.
Her hearing loss means communication can sometimes require adaptation. But it also means she brings a skill to the group that many others don’t have. She knows sign language. And she teaches it to her friends.
That’s exactly the kind of exchange Wood believes a healthy community should encourage—recognizing that every person has gifts worth discovering and sharing.
Anne: “I Still Have Abilities. They’re Not the Same.”
Anne knows what it feels like for life to change.
A former kindergarten teacher, she spent approximately 20 years in the classroom and later worked as a substitute teacher. After seizures and a traumatic brain injury, much of the independence and routine she once knew changed.
She began IMPACT Forward gradually, attending a couple of days a week as she built her stamina and adjusted to the program. What she found was a place where people saw more than what had happened to her.
“They accept me as I am and treat me like a normal person,” Anne said.
Later, she put it even more simply: “They treat us like human beings. I am still alive!”
For Anne, one of IMPACT Forward’s strengths is that participants aren’t expected to be alike. “It’s inclusive, and it’s not one size fits all,” she explained. “It’s what’s your size? Who are you?”
If others are playing a sport she can’t physically play, she can sit nearby and cheer them on. In the kitchen, she may not be able to do everything she once could, but she can still help chop vegetables and participate.
“I still have abilities,” she said. “They’re not the same.” That distinction matters.
IMPACT Forward doesn’t focus solely on what someone can no longer do. It asks what that person can do—and what else might still be possible.
Reconnecting With the Person She Has Always Been
For Anne, community service is particularly meaningful. Before her injury, volunteering was part of her life. Through IMPACT Forward, she has been able to reconnect with some of those experiences.
“Coming here reminds me of parts of me that were functional,” she said.
The program’s daily routine even reminds the former teacher of being in a classroom—arriving, checking in, and beginning the day together. IMPACT Forward has also given her a place where she doesn’t have to constantly explain herself.
“Being here with this program allows me to relax and be myself and have conversations, laugh,” she said.
There have been tears, too. Anne has cried with friends experiencing loss and shared both difficult and joyful moments with the people around her. When asked whether the staff genuinely care about participants, she didn’t hesitate. “They do,” she said. “Not just because it’s their job description.”
For Vernell, Having Somewhere to Go Matters
Vernell understands the value of having a reason to get up and go somewhere. At 48, she has spent much of her life working, including as a seamstress and housekeeper, and has participated in vocational and job training.
At IMPACT Forward, she enjoys communicating and socializing with her peers, laughing, exercising, visiting places in the community, and participating in art. She enjoys the routine. She enjoys the people. And she enjoys simply having somewhere she wants to be.
Asked what life might be like without IMPACT Forward, Vernell’s response underscores why a structured daytime program can matter so much. “I’d be sad, and dealing with depression and everything,” she said.
Does IMPACT Forward mean a lot to her? “It sure does.”
A Meaningful Day Can Help Prevent a Crisis
Wood says that sense of purpose isn’t incidental to mental health recovery. It’s part of it.
“When they come, and they’re having a meaningful day, it does prevent mental health crisis,” she said.
Some days participants are eager to socialize. On other days, they may need to withdraw a little. IMPACT Forward provides a safe environment where staff understand those fluctuations and participants can learn strategies for managing them.
Coping skills, stress management, meditation, and support groups are incorporated into the program. A licensed therapist employed by IMPACT of the Piedmont also provides a group using the Wellness Recovery Action Plan, or WRAP.
Participants come from many different circumstances and carry many different stories. Some have experienced profound grief or trauma. Some live with family, independently or in assisted living settings. Some are trying to return to employment. Others are learning how to manage daily life after circumstances changed dramatically.
“They’re just as different as we all are walking around,” Wood said. And sometimes what they need most is another person who understands.
The Challenge: Helping More People Find IMPACT Forward
Perhaps the most surprising part of IMPACT Forward’s current struggle is that the need for mental health services is not the problem. Awareness is. The program needs more referrals to build the enrollment necessary for long-term sustainability.
IMPACT Forward serves adults with mental health diagnoses whose needs can safely be met within a group psychosocial rehabilitation setting. Services require the appropriate medical referral/order, and participants must be medically and psychiatrically stable enough for group participation.
Because of the program’s current facility and transportation limitations, participants also generally need to be ambulatory, although some use walkers.
IMPACT Forward is designed to help people experiencing challenges such as anxiety, panic attacks, isolation, and difficulty managing mental health symptoms. It isn’t equipped to safely serve every level of medical or behavioral need.
But Wood believes many people in and around Davie County could benefit from the program but simply don’t know it exists.
Transportation Can Stand Between Someone and Help
Even when someone is a good fit for IMPACT Forward, getting there can be difficult. Although IMPACT Forward operates a 15-passenger van, transportation is one of the program’s greatest challenges.
With a small staff of three, transporting participants from multiple locations while maintaining appropriate staffing at the program site is logistically difficult. Outside transportation services may be available, but they come with costs that cannot be absorbed by IMPACT Forward’s existing reimbursement structure.
Matthew travels from Forsyth County, with his parents providing transportation so he can participate. Not every potential participant has someone who can do the same. Community sponsorship of transportation could directly help people access the program.
But transportation is only one way to help.
Sponsor a Meal. Share a Skill. Give Someone Your Time.
Wood would love to see churches, businesses, civic groups and individuals become more involved with IMPACT Forward.
A group could sponsor lunch once a month or once a quarter. Better yet, volunteers could come in and help participants prepare that meal—teaching basic cooking skills while sitting down, talking and getting to know one another.
Someone could sponsor an outing, swimming supplies, a movie or another experience that might otherwise be out of reach. Volunteers could share talents in art, music, cooking, exercise, crafts or countless other areas.
“Skilled volunteers are an amazing blessing,” Wood said.
She’s watched people try an art form for the first time and discover that they’re good at it. That new interest then becomes something they can continue at home—a source of recreation, accomplishment and healthy use of their time.
“It just adds so much spice to life when you have other people coming in and bringing their talents and sharing,” Wood said.
But she emphasizes that volunteers bring something even more important than a skill. They bring their attention.
“Really get to know the people, get to know the names, just see them,” Wood said. “Give them the dignity of time and investment.”
A Program Worth Keeping
There is little question in Wood’s mind about whether IMPACT Forward is working. “The quality of the program and the impact on their lives—there’s no doubt about that,” she said. “The financial sustainability is where the concern is.”
The program needs to increase enrollment and community support to become sustainable. Without that growth, its future is uncertain. For IMPACT of the Piedmont, that is particularly difficult because staff members can see what is happening in the lives of the people they serve.
Bowman sees participants becoming healthier and happier. She sees people taking steps toward employment. She sees friendships forming and confidence growing. Wood sees people who have experienced isolation finding a community. “There are some of them that are forgotten people,” she said. “It’s just a part of what we do, but it’s an important part, and I don’t want to give up on them.”
“You Matter. We Care About You.”
IMPACT Forward doesn’t need only one kind of help.
It needs referrals from physicians, therapists, social workers, care managers and others who know adults who may benefit from psychosocial rehabilitation.
It needs volunteers willing to share a talent or simply spend time getting to know participants.
It needs community partners willing to sponsor transportation, meals, outings and activities.
And it needs financial support to sustain the program as enrollment grows toward sustainability.
For Wood, community involvement sends a message that can be as important as the activity or meal being sponsored:
“You matter. We care about you.”
Matthew matters as he practices the office skills that could someday lead to a job.
Vernell matters when she walks through the door knowing she has somewhere to go and people waiting to see her.
Anne matters—not because of what she used to be able to do, but because of everything she can still do.
And Maggie matters, not simply because IMPACT Forward has given her a place to belong, but because she makes that place richer by being there.
Maybe that is the larger lesson of IMPACT Forward. A strong community isn’t one in which everyone is the same, equally independent or traveling through life without challenges. It’s one that makes room for people to participate, contribute, form friendships and be seen for who they are.
For Maggie, it comes back to those three words:
“I belong here.”
With the community’s help, IMPACT Forward can continue to be a place where she—and many more people like Matthew, Anne and Vernell—can say the same.
Interested in IMPACT Forward?
IMPACT Forward welcomes inquiries from individuals and families interested in participating in the program, as well as community members who would like to volunteer or provide financial support.
To learn more, contact Anna Bowman, Director of IMPACT Forward, at 336-751-5014, Ext. 700, or anna.bowman@impactpiedmont.org.
Whether through a referral, volunteer time, financial support, or simply helping spread the word, community involvement can help ensure that IMPACT Forward continues providing a place for adults to build skills, form friendships, gain confidence, and find a sense of belonging.