Embrace Centers for Community Inc.

About the Organization

Organization category

Public Charity

Country / State

United States / Virginia

Mission

Bringing people together to nurture strong, just, and resilient communities through the compassionate sharing of resources and experiences.

Programs or services

We bring people together to strengthen communities through community engagement, resource navigation, volunteer and leadership development, collaborative partnerships, and initiatives that improve access to housing, food, healthcare, and other essential resources.

Detailed programs

Embrace Centers for Community is a nonprofit organization that brings people together to nurture strong, just, and resilient communities by strengthening relationships, coordinating resources, and building local leadership. Rather than operating isolated programs, our work creates a community-based ecosystem where neighbors, volunteers, nonprofits, congregations, healthcare providers, schools, businesses, and public agencies work together to address locally identified priorities.

Community Assistance Network (CAN) connects individuals and families with housing assistance, food, clothing, transportation, healthcare, utility assistance, employment resources, legal services, and other essential supports. Community Health Workers and Resource Navigators provide personalized guidance, coordinate services across organizations, and help neighbors build long-term stability.

Community Leadership Development recruits, trains, and supports Community Health Workers, Resource Navigators, Peer Recovery Specialists, volunteers, and other community leaders who use professional training and lived experience to strengthen community well-being.

Community Engagement and Partnerships convene neighbors and community partners to identify local priorities, coordinate resources, and develop collaborative solutions that improve housing, health, food security, and community resilience.

Shared Community Space provides affordable, accessible facilities where nonprofit organizations, healthcare providers, recovery groups, educational programs, and community initiatives can serve neighbors and strengthen community life.

Target Audience

We serve people of all ages across the communities we support, with a particular focus on individuals and families experiencing economic hardship, housing instability, health disparities, or barriers to accessing community resources. We also work with congregations, nonprofits, healthcare providers, schools, businesses, and public agencies to strengthen community well-being through shared responsibility.

Geographic Focus

United States, Ghana, Virginia (USA)

Current projects

Community Assistance Network (CAN): Embrace Centers for Community's flagship initiative, CAN connects individuals and families with essential resources through Community Health Workers, Resource Navigators, volunteers, and community partners. CAN helps neighbors access housing, food, transportation, healthcare, employment resources, financial assistance, and other supports while coordinating services across multiple organizations to promote long-term stability.

CLEAR (Community Listening, Engagement, and Response): CLEAR is our community engagement framework that helps communities identify priorities through listening, collaboration, and shared leadership. Working alongside residents, nonprofits, healthcare providers, congregations, businesses, and public agencies, CLEAR strengthens community decision-making and develops collaborative solutions that reflect local needs and assets.

Shared Community Space & Community Medical Clinic Initiative: Embrace Centers for Community provides affordable, accessible space for nonprofit organizations, health providers, recovery groups, educational programs, and community organizations. We are expanding this work through the development of a collaborative community medical clinic model that brings healthcare providers together in shared community space to increase access to care while reducing overhead costs and strengthening coordination among partner organizations.

The Village @ Embrace: The Village is an innovative supportive housing initiative that will create a neighborhood of permanently built cottage homes for individuals and families experiencing housing instability. Residents will receive individualized support through Community Health Workers while participating in a community designed to foster stability, belonging, and pathways toward long-term housing success. The model is being developed for replication in communities across Virginia and beyond.

Community Health Workforce Development: We continue to recruit, train, and support Community Health Workers, Resource Navigators, Peer Recovery Specialists, and volunteers, expanding the local workforce dedicated to improving community health and connecting neighbors with resources.

Community Leadership and Partnership Development: Embrace Centers for Community continues to build cross-sector partnerships among nonprofits, congregations, healthcare providers, schools, businesses, civic organizations, and public agencies while expanding opportunities for volunteer leadership and community engagement.

Expansion of the Embrace Centers for Community Model: As a social enterprise laboratory and community innovation hub, we are refining and documenting the Embrace model for expansion into additional communities, helping local leaders build stronger, more connected, and more resilient communities through shared responsibility and collaboration.

Organization goals

Strengthen communities by fostering relationships, shared leadership, and collaboration among neighbors and community partners.
Improve access to essential resources and opportunities that promote health, stability, and economic well-being.
Build community capacity by developing local leaders, volunteers, and collaborative networks that address community priorities.
Advance and expand the Embrace Centers for Community model to help communities across the US and beyond become stronger, more just, and more resilient -- neighbor by neighbor, working together.

Leadership

Executive Director: Jenelle Watson CCHW (Jenelle@EmbraceCenters.com), SAW Associate Site Director: Chris Hopkins (Chris.Hopkins @ EmbraceCenters.com), Community Assistance Network Program Director: Kaye Shaner CCHW (Bstiltne@vt.edu), Resource Navigation/CHW Lead: Keith Shaner CCHW (keith@embracecenters.com),

Strategic priorities

Expand the Embrace Centers for Community model into additional communities while maintaining fidelity to our mission of nurturing strong, just, and resilient communities.
Strengthen community capacity by developing leaders, volunteers, Community Health Workers, and collaborative partnerships that empower neighbors to address local challenges together.
Increase access to essential resources by expanding innovative approaches to housing, healthcare, food security, resource navigation, and other community-based supports.
Advance community innovation by serving as a social enterprise laboratory and incubator that develops, evaluates, and shares effective community-centered solutions throughout the Embrace Centers network and with partners across our region, state, nation, and the world.
Build a sustainable organization through diversified funding, strategic partnerships, strong governance, and investment in the people and systems needed to ensure long-term impact.

Organizational capacity

Embrace Centers for Community combines a dedicated professional staff with an extensive network of volunteers, community leaders, partner organizations, and neighbors who work together to strengthen the communities we serve. Our organizational capacity is built on collaboration, allowing us to accomplish far more collectively than any one organization could achieve alone.

Our work is supported by experienced leadership in nonprofit management, community health, community engagement, Community Health Worker programs, partnership development, volunteer coordination, trauma-informed care, appreciative inquiry, organizational development, and social enterprise innovation. Professional staff are complemented by thousands of volunteer hours each year, local advisory teams, collaborative partnerships with more than 100 organizations, and a growing network of community leaders who help shape and sustain our work.

We have developed strong operational systems to support community impact, including trauma-informed resource navigation through the Community Assistance Network (CAN), Community Health Worker case management, collaborative partnership coordination, community listening and evaluation through CLEAR, volunteer management, data-informed decision-making, shared community space operations, financial stewardship, governance, and continuous program evaluation.

As a social enterprise laboratory and community innovation incubator, we intentionally build systems that are sustainable, adaptable, and designed for replication. Rather than relying solely on organizational growth, we strengthen our capacity by cultivating stronger partnerships, empowering local leadership, and continually improving the models we develop and share.

Funding Needs

Grant categories you're seeking

Aging and Seniors, Awards, Children, Community and Economic Development, Community Services, Disabilities, Domestic Violence, Education, Entrepreneurs and Startups, Financial Assistance, Health and Medical, Homeless, Housing, In-Kind Support, Individual, International, Justice and Juvenile Justice, Mental Health, Nutrition and Food, Operating Support, Quality of Life, Refugee and Immigrant, Social Justice, Substance Abuse, Transportation, Veterans and Military, Women, Women-Owned Startups and Businesses, Workforce, Youth and At-Risk Youth

Funding needs

Embrace Centers for Community is currently seeking grant funding to strengthen and expand community-based initiatives that improve health, housing stability, food security, community engagement, and access to essential resources. Funding will support Community Health Workers and Resource Navigators, collaborative community partnerships, leadership and volunteer development, shared community spaces, innovative housing solutions such as The Village @ Embrace, community listening and planning through the CLEAR framework, and the continued expansion of the Community Assistance Network (CAN).

As a social enterprise laboratory and community innovation incubator, Embrace Centers for Community develops, evaluates, and refines community-centered approaches that can be adapted by other communities. We actively share what we learn across the growing Embrace Centers network and with nonprofit, healthcare, faith, public, and community partners as part of our commitment to building stronger, more just, and more resilient communities throughout our region, our state, our nation, and ultimately the world.

We also welcome unrestricted operating support and capacity-building investments that strengthen organizational sustainability, enable us to respond to emerging community needs, and accelerate the expansion of the Embrace Centers for Community model into additional communities.

Impact & Recognition

Outcomes and impact

Impact at Embrace Centers for Community is measured not only by the number of people reached or resources shared, but by the relationships, capacity, stability, and shared responsibility that grow through the work. We do not see ourselves as creating change for a community or delivering services to passive recipients. We partner with neighbors and community organizations to be the change together—to be community with community, for community.

In 2025, our flagship site at Embrace Waynesboro (community population 23,000) worked with 889 individual neighbors and their families, responded to 4,316 identified needs, shared more than $700,000 in resources, and generated an estimated community impact of more than $2.3 million. Volunteers contributed more than 10,000 hours of service, valued at approximately $350,000. Our facilities were used for 1,192 hours of community activity, representing more than $166,000 in shared-space value. Through CAN and related initiatives, neighbors also received clothing, transportation, shelter, resource navigation, case management, and connections to critical services. This represents a 1,100%+ return on that community's investment of $230,000.

These numbers reflect more than transactions. They represent neighbors moving toward greater stability, organizations coordinating more effectively, volunteers discovering meaningful ways to contribute, and community members becoming leaders, problem-solvers, and partners in shared life. Through CAN, CLEAR, shared community space, and our broader partnership network, we help connect people, resources, ideas, and opportunities so the community can respond to its own challenges with greater strength and coordination.

Our deepest impact is the creation of a more connected community in which people are not divided into those who serve and those who are served. Everyone has gifts to share, needs that may require support, and a role in building a stronger, more just, and more resilient community.

Success stories

1. From Homelessness to Community Leader

After experiencing homelessness and addiction, one neighbor connected with Embrace Centers for Community through recovery support. Today, he serves as a certified Community Health Worker, helping others navigate services while leading initiatives that strengthen his community.

2. Finding Stability After Domestic Violence

A woman fleeing domestic violence arrived with little more than hope for a safer future. Through coordinated housing support, resource navigation, and community partnerships, she secured stable housing, employment, and a renewed sense of independence for herself and her family.

3. More Than a Meal

A family facing financial hardship came to Embrace Waynesboro seeking food assistance. Through the Community Assistance Network, they also received help with housing, transportation, healthcare access, and long-term resource navigation—building stability rather than simply addressing an immediate need.

4. Community Space, Community Impact

By opening our Waynesboro facility to healthcare providers, nonprofits, recovery groups, and community organizations, Embrace Centers for Community/Waynesboro created more than 1,100 hours of shared community space in one year. This collaborative model expanded access to services while allowing partner organizations to focus more resources on serving neighbors.

5. Turning Community Listening into Community Action

When residents, nonprofit leaders, healthcare providers, and congregations came together through Embrace's community engagement process, they identified shared priorities and coordinated local solutions. By listening first and acting together, partners transformed individual efforts into lasting community impact.

Organization achievements

Embrace Centers for Community has intentionally focused on celebrating the achievements of our neighbors and community partners rather than seeking recognition for ourselves. Nevertheless, we are honored that our work has earned the confidence of organizations committed to strengthening communities through collaboration and innovation.

Among our most significant milestones was being selected by our region's leading community foundation to design and pilot a new approach to community resource navigation. Rather than responding to a competitive grant opportunity, Embrace Centers was invited by the foundation to develop a model that would help neighbors access services more effectively while helping community organizations coordinate referrals, reduce duplication, and better manage their intake and case management responsibilities. The foundation invested $400,000 to launch this collaborative effort, resulting in the Community Assistance Network (CAN)—a trauma-informed, trauma-responsive, and healing-centered approach to community health that continues to evolve through partnership and shared learning.

Our greatest achievement, however, cannot be measured by funding or recognition. It is the trust we have built within our community. Every day, neighbors who have experienced poverty, homelessness, isolation, trauma, or other hardships tell us they feel heard, seen, valued, and respected in ways they have not experienced elsewhere. They are welcomed not as clients or cases to be managed, but as neighbors with gifts, hopes, and a vital role to play in strengthening the community.

For us, that trust is the strongest measure of success. It reflects the relationships we have built, the partnerships we have nurtured, and a community increasingly committed to being community with community, for community.

Major funders

Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge

Partnerships & Collaborations

Partnership is the foundation of everything we do. Embrace Centers for Community works hand-in-hand with more than 100 state, regional, and local partners to strengthen communities through shared responsibility, shared resources, and shared leadership. We believe communities thrive when organizations, agencies, congregations, businesses, civic groups, and neighbors work together rather than in isolation.

Our partnerships are reciprocal. We not only seek support for our mission—we actively support the missions of our partners by sharing our facilities, volunteers, expertise, community connections, and lived experiences to help advance their work.

The Community Assistance Network (CAN) serves as our community's central resource navigation and case management hub, connecting neighbors with the partner organizations best equipped to meet their needs while reducing duplication of services. Through CLEAR (Community Listening, Engagement, and Response), our ongoing appreciative inquiry process, we continually identify the hopes, strengths, priorities, and gifts of both neighbors and partner organizations, creating new opportunities for collaboration and shared impact.

Our partners include state and local government agencies, public health organizations, hospitals, behavioral health providers, school divisions, Community Action Partnerships, Community Services Boards, philanthropic foundations, civic organizations, congregations, faith-based organizations, nonprofits, businesses, and thousands of individual community members who share their time, talents, and resources.

As a social enterprise laboratory and community innovation incubator, we develop, evaluate, and share collaborative models that strengthen communities throughout the Embrace Centers network and beyond.

Sustainability, dissemination & replicability

Embrace Centers for Community is intentionally designed as both a community-serving organization and a social enterprise laboratory where innovative, community-centered solutions are developed, field-tested, evaluated, refined, and shared. Our goal is not simply to solve local challenges, but to create practical, evidence-informed models that can strengthen communities everywhere.

Every major initiative—including the Community Assistance Network (CAN), CLEAR (Community Listening, Engagement, and Response), our shared community space model, collaborative medical clinic initiative, Community Health Worker workforce development, and The Village @ Embrace—is designed with long-term sustainability, continuous improvement, and replication in mind. Through ongoing community listening, appreciative inquiry, data collection, and partnership evaluation, we continually refine our work based on real-world experience.

The lessons we learn are intentionally shared across the growing Embrace Centers network and with nonprofit organizations, healthcare providers, congregations, government agencies, educational institutions, and community leaders seeking effective approaches to community development. Programs and models developed and field-tested at Embrace Centers are already informing work in communities across the United States and, through our partnership with the University of Cape Coast and Gardens for All, are now supporting community development initiatives in Ghana.

By openly sharing what works—and what doesn't—we hope to accelerate innovation, strengthen collaboration, and help build stronger, more just, and more resilient communities throughout our region, our Commonwealth, our nation, and the world.

Internal checks & balances to prevent fraud

Embrace Centers for Community is committed to the highest standards of financial stewardship, accountability, and transparency. Our organization is governed by an independent Board of Directors that provides fiduciary oversight, approves major financial decisions, reviews regular financial reports, and ensures organizational compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and nonprofit governance standards. Board members complete annual conflict-of-interest disclosures and serve without compensation.

Our financial safeguards include written bylaws and governance policies, board oversight of financial accounts, dual-signature requirements for disbursements, segregation of governance and operational responsibilities, committee oversight, formal approval processes for significant financial actions, fidelity bond coverage for individuals with access to organizational assets, and independent financial review by a Certified Public Accountant.

Together, these controls help ensure that charitable resources are managed responsibly and ethically while protecting the trust placed in Embrace Centers for Community by donors, grantmakers, government agencies, community partners, and the neighbors we serve.

Get Involved

How can volunteers get involved?

At Embrace Centers for Community, we believe everyone has something to contribute. Whether someone has an hour to give each month, professional expertise to share, lived experience to offer, or simply a desire to build stronger relationships, there is a place for them in our community.

Volunteers serve in many ways, including welcoming neighbors, providing resource navigation and community support, assisting with food and clothing distribution, supporting community events, mentoring and leadership development, helping maintain our shared spaces, offering administrative or professional skills, participating in community listening initiatives, and sharing specialized talents such as healthcare, education, skilled trades, technology, gardening, transportation, or the arts.

Community members can also become involved by joining one of our collaborative initiatives, participating in appreciative inquiry and community conversations, sharing resources or experiences with neighbors, serving on committees, partnering through their organization or congregation, or helping develop and test new community-based solutions through our social enterprise laboratory.

More than volunteering, we invite people to become partners in building stronger, more just, and more resilient communities. At Embrace Centers for Community, everyone has gifts to share, everyone has something to learn, and everyone belongs. Together, we become community with community, for community.

How can donors support your mission?

At Embrace Centers for Community, we believe everyone has something to contribute. Whether someone has an hour to give each month, professional expertise to share, lived experience to offer, or simply a desire to build stronger relationships, there is a place for them in our community.

Volunteers serve in many ways, including welcoming neighbors, providing resource navigation and community support, assisting with food and clothing distribution, supporting community events, mentoring and leadership development, helping maintain our shared spaces, offering administrative or professional skills, participating in community listening initiatives, and sharing specialized talents such as healthcare, education, skilled trades, technology, gardening, transportation, or the arts.

Community members can also become involved by joining one of our collaborative initiatives, participating in appreciative inquiry and community conversations, sharing resources or experiences with neighbors, serving on committees, partnering through their organization or congregation, or helping develop and test new community-based solutions through our social enterprise laboratory.

More than volunteering, we invite people to become partners in building stronger, more just, and more resilient communities. At Embrace Centers for Community, everyone has gifts to share, everyone has something to learn, and everyone belongs. Together, we become community with community, for community.

Do you accept partnerships?

Partnership is the foundation of everything we do. Embrace Centers for Community was built on the conviction that lasting community change happens when neighbors, organizations, businesses, congregations, educational institutions, healthcare providers, government agencies, and civic organizations work together around shared goals. We actively seek partnerships that strengthen communities through collaboration, innovation, shared leadership, and mutual learning.

We welcome opportunities to collaborate with nonprofit organizations, healthcare systems, public health agencies, schools and universities, local governments, foundations, businesses, faith communities, civic organizations, and grassroots community groups. Partnerships may include shared programming, community engagement, volunteer initiatives, research and evaluation, workforce development, resource sharing, community listening, social enterprise development, or the co-creation of new solutions to emerging community challenges.

Rather than asking partners to fit into our work, we begin by listening. We seek to understand each partner's mission, strengths, and goals so we can identify opportunities where our work is strengthened together. As a social enterprise laboratory and community innovation incubator, we also welcome partners interested in developing, testing, evaluating, and sharing new community-centered models that can benefit communities far beyond our own.

Our vision is not to build the largest organization, but to help build a strong network of people and organizations working together for the common good.

Are you seeking board members?

Embrace Centers for Community intentionally recruits members for its Board of Directors to ensure the board reflects the skills, experiences, perspectives, and leadership needed to guide the organization's mission and long-term sustainability. While board positions are not filled through an open application process, we are always interested in identifying community leaders who demonstrate a commitment to collaboration, innovation, good governance, and strengthening communities through shared leadership.

Community participation is at the heart of our work. In every community where an Embrace Center operates, we develop local advisory teams that bring together neighbors, community leaders, partner organizations, businesses, congregations, and other stakeholders. These advisory teams help identify community priorities, strengthen partnerships, guide local initiatives, and ensure that each Embrace Center remains responsive to the unique strengths, opportunities, and needs of the community it serves.

Individuals interested in serving in a governance or advisory role are encouraged to connect with us. We welcome conversations with people who share our commitment to building stronger, more just, and more resilient communities through collaboration, innovation, and shared responsibility.

Website & Social Media