b'Mobilizing a teamAt Cone Health, team members got to work, drumming up interest in the community for the program and finding ways to provide summer jobs for 15 local teenagers. The Cone Health Career Development team then prepared prospective employers for interviews with interested teens before connecting them with their eager pool of candidates.Some donors choose to give to Cone Healths Area of Greatest Need fund, which gives the board discretion to use the money how it sees fit. The Cone Health board believed this program, now dubbed ConeCorps, supported the mission of serving the community, and thus funds were used to pay the kids salaries; provide transportation to and from their jobs; supply lunches, snacks and beverages at their worksites each day; and give each participant a backpack that they could use for school. Unlike a grant that we seek for a specific project, those dollars are there because people trust us to react to opportunity or need, Schneider says today. Having that money helped us realize that if money is not the obstacle, then we could make it happen.No, enthusiasm and money werent the obstacles. COVID-19 was the obstacle. Cone Healths hospitals and health centers maintained strict protocols about letting in visitors and volunteers. Providing positions at Cone Health for teenagerswho at that point still werent eligible for vaccinationswas out of the question.Schneider and her team now needed to find 15 jobs for high school-age kids in the middle of a pandemic.Time was another obstacle. The warmer weather brought increasing pressure to find paying gigs for the 15 ConeCorps members. So she tapped out an email to a few of her nonprofit contacts that read a little something like this: Guys, what if we have a work program for teenagers this summer? Theyll hold down jobs at your organization at no cost to you. Philanthropy will pay for everything, but you have to figure out the rest. Oh, and we have to be ready to go in six weeks. Buck and Winston were the two who said, Heck, yeah. We can make this happen, Schneider says. Above: In March 2021, Greensboro Police Chief Brian James invited 25 local leaders to learn about a different type of community ini-Buck is Buck Cochran, who at the time was CEOtiative to address violent crimes. By the summer, ConeCorps was of Peacehaven Community Farm, a sustainable farmup and running. Here, Chief James is pictured with three local teens in Whitsett that connects people with intellectualworking at Peacehaven Farms alongside a Peacehaven staff mem-and developmental disabilities to their community.ber.Below: ConeCorp teens also worked at Guilford Education 10Cone Health Philanthropy Alliances Teacher Supply Warehouse.'