Four Stories That Remind Us How We Move FOURward Together
🎉This month, Be The Ones turns FOUR! 🎉
Last week, I wrote about this birthday and our theme: Moving FOURward Together. Read it here if you haven’t yet.
As we celebrate, we're looking back at four moments from this year that remind us of something we've learned again and again over these four years:
Nobody moves forward alone.
Each tells a different story, but together they say something about how change happens—and about the South Carolina we're working to build together.
1. WE STARTED THE YEAR BY ASKING WHAT WE ARE FOR…
Be The Ones kicked off 2026 serving as the official South Carolina Community Partner for the Walk for Peace, led by the monks of Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center.
You can read all about it and see incredible photos and videos here.
What began for us as a role coordinating logistics quickly became something much deeper; a living example of what collective care can actually look like.
At a moment when so much of our public life feels loud, reactive, and defined by opposition, the Walk felt like an exhale, and maybe even a calling inward.
So much civic action, especially right now, is focused on what we're fighting against. Necessary, yes. But it can’t be the only way.
The Walk asked something different of us: What are we for?
For peace. For compassion. For shared responsibility. For each other.
More than 20,000 South Carolinians chose to show up — in care. That matters. It tells us something essential about who we are beneath the noise and division — that fear does not need to be our default.
I said this in January, and I still deeply believe it: people across South Carolina — and honestly, across the country — are craving this kind of engagement, this kind of shared participation. Spaces where care is something we can practice together.
The Walk reminded us that another way is possible — and that it’s already happening.
As we think about Moving FOURward Together, I’m reflecting on the question the monks helped us begin the year with: What are we for?
What are we willing to walk toward? What kind of communities are we trying to build? What do we want democracy to feel like? What does belonging look like?
Being against something can mobilize us in a moment. Being for something gives us somewhere to go.
For Be The Ones, moving FOURward can't only mean reacting to what happens around us. It means continuing to create spaces that invite people into civic life through joy, creativity, care, and connection—not because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't, but because we believe in what can happen if we do.
2. WE PUT THE MIC WHERE IT BELONGS: IN YOUNG PEOPLE’S HANDS
In April, we partnered with SCETV on Ready to Vote, a special episode of Palmetto Perspectives centering the voices of 14 young South Carolinians talking about voting, leadership, their communities, the issues shaping their lives, and what this election year looks (and feels) like from where they sit.
Every election cycle, we hear the same questions. Why aren't young people participating? What issues do they care about? What will motivate them? How do we reach them?
Those are important questions, but I think we too often skip the most obvious place to start: listen to them.
That's what we did; we put the microphones in their hands.
You can watch Litzy, Roni, Luke, Amber, Kate, and others share their voices here.
From first-time voters to campus leaders and community changemakers, these young South Carolinians talked candidly about what motivates them, what frustrates them, the barriers they encounter when trying to participate, and what gives them hope. They talked about the issues affecting their lives and communities, but they also talked about the ways they are already finding agency, building community, and creating change.
At Be The Ones, we don't think of young people simply as the leaders of tomorrow. They are leaders right now. They are already living with the consequences of decisions being made around them, they already have ideas about what their communities need, and they already have stories, relationships, creativity, frustration, hope, and power.
Our job isn't to manufacture that power for them or wait until we decide they're ready to use it. Our job is to help remove the barriers that make it harder to recognize and exercise the power they already have.
That's what our Young Leaders work is built around and why this partnership with SCETV meant so much to us. At a time when many young people feel overlooked in civic spaces, Ready to Vote didn't just include their voices in a larger conversation, their voices were the conversation.
We can't say we want to build a stronger future for young people while leaving them out of building it. Moving FOURward together means making room, sharing power, listening, and trusting them to help shape what comes next. Sometimes that starts quite literally by handing them the mic.
If you haven't watched Ready to Vote yet, I hope you will.
They have a lot to say. And we should be listening.
3. SOUTH CAROLINIANS SHOWED US WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE BELIEVE SHOWING UP MATTERS
April, May and June. If I’m honest they all kind of blend together.
In just over three weeks, South Carolina faced the possibility of mid-decade congressional redistricting. What followed was one of the clearest examples I've seen of what can happen when people understand what's at stake, know how to participate, and believe showing up might actually make a difference.
Organizations and communities across the state mobilized. People learned about a complicated issue many had never thought about before. They called and emailed lawmakers, wrote testimony, attended hearings, organized events, talked to their neighbors, and showed up.
Be The Ones and our partners helped engage more than 200,000 South Carolinians in just over three weeks.
Ultimately, South Carolina became the only Southern state to hold off mid-decade redistricting during the 2026 election cycle. Our fair maps work became, quite literally, a picture of democracy in action, South Carolinians coming together and making themselves heard.
And, South Carolinians kept showing up.
More than 855,000 South Carolinians voted in the June primaries, shattering all primary turnout records.
To me, these aren’t separate stories, they are two expressions of something bigger happening in South Carolina: people choosing to participate and discovering what can happen when they do.
That nothing changes here. That our politics are settled. That people don't participate. The outcomes are already decided, so showing up doesn't really matter.
Both challenged a story we've been told about our state for a very long time.
This year keeps telling us a different story. What do I mean by that, check out this blog.And while you’re here,check out these photos and stories from our redistricting fight.
For years, calling South Carolina “predictable” or “uncompetitive” did more than shape political commentary. It shaped where resources went, which communities received attention, and perhaps most importantly, whether people believed their own participation could make a difference.
What we saw this summer was what happens when that begins to change.
People participate when they believe their participation matters. They show up when they have useful information, when trusted people help make the path clearer, and when they know they won't be standing there alone.
It's easy to look at 200,000 people taking action or 855,000 people casting ballots and think something suddenly changed in South Carolina. But those moments were built on years of quieter work—the organizers building relationships, volunteers registering voters, community leaders sharing information, young people organizing their peers, and organizations creating the infrastructure that makes it possible for people to act when the moment comes.
That's why this story feels so connected to the idea of Moving FOURward Together.
Moving forward isn't just about what happens when everyone is suddenly paying attention. It's about what we build before the moment arrives, and what remains after it passes.
Sometimes you spend years building before you get to see what they make possible.
This summer, South Carolina gave us a glimpse.
4. A DAY IMAGINING WHAT CIVIC LIFE COULD BE AND WHAT COMES NEXT
This summer, we partnered with the Coastal Community Foundation Reverend Pinckney Scholars Program to bring together 70 college scholars representing 14 counties across the state for a day centered on civic learning, leadership, connection, and action.
Through interactive sessions, we explored how decisions get made, how to navigate systems of power, how personal stories connect to our communities, and the many ways young people can lead.
We also asked them to imagine something: What could leadership, community, and civic life actually look like in South Carolina if we designed it differently?
We want young people to understand the systems around them, absolutely. But we also want them to know they are allowed to question them, improve them, reshape them, and lead inside and outside of them.
So we designed the day to be participatory. Their experiences, communities, ideas, creativity, and stories were part of the expertise in the room.
Of the scholars who completed our post-event survey, 100% said their voice mattered,96% said the day changed how they thought about their role in their community and civic life and 93% left feeling more hopeful about people their age shaping the future.
When we asked them to describe civic participation and voting after the day, the words that kept coming back were motivated, informed, hopeful, important, changing, ready.
Ready.
Young people aren't empty vessels waiting for someone to teach them democracy. They arrive with knowledge, lived experiences, relationships, ideas, creativity, and expertise of their own. What they often need are the tools, relationships, and spaces to connect what they already carry to the power they already have.
That, too, is what Moving FOURward Together.
When I put these four stories next to each other, I see the same thread running through.
A peace walk that asked us to center what we are for.
Young people trusted to speak for themselves.
Communities proving that participation can change what happens.
Students given space not just to learn about civic life as it exists, but to imagine what it could become.
None of these moments belongs to Be The Ones alone.
Every one of them depended on partners, young people, volunteers, community members, organizers, educators, storytellers, voters, donors, and people who simply decided to show up. Every one happened because people chose to do something together.
Four years ago, we started Be The Ones with a belief that if we invested in people, built relationships, made participation feel more possible, accessible, communal,and joyful, and kept showing up, something meaningful could grow.
Four years later, I believe that more than ever.
Moving FOURward Together isn’t about Be The Ones moving forward and asking everyone else to follow. It’s about all of us continuing to build something together that none of us could build alone.
And if these first months of 2026 have reminded me anything, it’s that there are a lot more people ready to walk, speak, organize, imagine, draw, sing, demand, and build than we sometimes realize.
The question now is what we choose to build next together.
I can't wait to find out.
If you'd like to celebrate our birthday with us, we'd be honored if you would consider making a birthday gift. Every donation helps us continue removing barriers, investing in people, and building a stronger culture of civic participation across South Carolina.You can support this work by making a donation here.