Selma group gets things done

SELMA — Erica “A.J.” Foote joined Activate Selma in part to train her service dog.

“I’m unable to leave my home without assistance, as I have a seizure disorder and I might hit my head or hurt myself,” she explained.

But her dog must be able to focus on her alone to alert her when it senses an oncoming seizure. The animal can’t be distracted by traffic, people, the everyday things of life. So Foote wanted to familiarize her dog with the people and places of Selma.

“If it wasn’t for that, I would be trapped in my house 24/7,” she said.

Foote joined Activate Selma last fall and has since become one of the most active members of a group that, by design, does lots of little things. Its member volunteers plant and water flowers downtown, decorate storefronts at Christmas, organize cleanup patrols after street festivals.

On a larger scale, Activate Selma is the driving force behind the Rockin’ on Raiford concert series, and it’s responsible for the growing number of murals downtown.

“In March, I did a game day event,” said Foote, herself a fan of Dungeons & Dragons. “We did like D&D, board games and Magic: The Gathering. That was a huge success, and I was the primary person for organizing that.”

Activate Selma has also allowed her to be creative, Foote said. “I did some chalk art for Hatchet,” she said, referring to the new downtown taproom. “It was something fun for children walking by.”

Though her service dog is now fully trained, Foote plans to remain active in the group.

“I want to do more game day events,” she said. “I’m getting in touch with Hatchet to schedule an event for later this year. But overall, I’m just wanting to help out where they need help.”

And that’s pretty much the group’s reason for being.

Jeffery Hamilton, a founder of Activate Selma, introduced him to the group, said Michael Sneed, owner of Old Fashioned Ice Cream. He liked where the group was headed.

“They were trying to figure out what to do in Selma,” Sneed said, though that first meeting didn’t necessarily bode well. “I walked in, and it was only like four or five people,” he recalled.

But momentum built quickly, Sneed said. “We just started to figure out things to get the people downtown,” he said. “That was when an idea like Rockin’ on Raiford came up. That was the first major thing we did. It is a … concert series to bring people downtown.”

The group helps where it can, Sneed said. “After the Latino Festival, we went around helping to pick up trash,” he said. “We wanted to help so that we could keep everything nice for visitors. So we just fill in and activate what needs to get done. You have to do it and not complain.”

When the group launched, downtown Selma was dying, said Hamilton, who founded Activate Selma with Cindy Brookshire, Melissa Dooley and Donna Reid. “The antique stores were dying out,” he said. “The Rudy theater was bringing in people, but there wasn’t anything to do in the area, and there wasn’t anywhere to eat.”

The group had plenty of motivation, Brookshire said, but needed ideas, so it turned to a video series by Roger Brooks, an expert in downtown development. “So he would tell you, ‘OK, your town needs an anchor,’ ” she recalled. “For us, that would be The Rudy theater. Then you need at least four or five reasons to stay in the area for two hours or overnight.”

Since the group’s founding, downtown has added Sneed’s ice cream shop, the Hatchet taproom, Coffee on Raiford coffee shop, Mama Nem’s restaurant and, most recently, a cocktail lounge.

The little things matter too, like the table the group placed in a town gazebo.

“If you set out a table that is turquoise, then people know that’s the place to go for conversation,” Brookshire said. “It’s just a little visual thing, just like an artist would paint a mural.”

Selma’s first mural depicts the town’s railroad history.

“Little things help to uplift the town and keep us growing,” Hamilton said, tipping his hat to businessman Ron Hester, who commissioned that early mural and more.

Hamilton pointed also to Rockin’ on Raiford and other small acts, like placing flower pots around town. “We just keep asking ourselves what we would like to see happening five years down the road and 10 years down the road,” he said. “We were working on that list, not even knowing we were working on it. We just wanted to see things getting done.”

Activate Selma focuses on filling in the gaps, Brookshire said. “I always think about the folktale ‘Stone Soup,’ ” she said. “Two men come to town, and they just want something to eat, but no one will give them anything.

“So one of them takes a stone out of his pocket and says, ‘Now I can make some stone soup.’ People start asking about it. The man responds, ‘I’ll show you. I need a pot, and I need some water. Then … I just need a couple of carrots.’ He goes on until everyone is involved and they’re making a soup.”

That’s what it’s like to help a town, Brookshire said. “You start adding things, and by the time you get the whole town involved, you are feeding people,” she said. “You just engage people. When people get involved with community engagement, there is excitement.”

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