NEW BERN, N.C. (WNCT) – Six organizations from across the state will receive grants from the North Carolina Healthcare Foundation to assist underserved populations and rural communities. One of those organizations is in New Bern.  

Part of the $25,000 Peletah Ministries is getting will be used to help educate underserved populations in Craven, Jones and Pamlico counties about the vaccine. 

“It’s just like Christmas, like a Christmas miracle for communities and families that are in desperate need of getting this information, getting their vaccine,” said Executive Director of Peletah Ministries, Dr. Dawn Baldwin Gibson. 

This is all part of the North Carolina Healthcare Foundations COVID-19 “Fill the Gap” response fund, distributing $150,000 in total to six non-profits across the state. This is all to help these organizations assist people disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including people of color, frontline workers and rural communities. 

“Peletah Ministries and their resilient health program really embodies the spirit of the fill the gap program and the impact that we were trying to achieve with this program,” said North Carolina Healthcare Foundation Senior Director Dean Higgins. 

Throughout the pandemic, Peletah Ministries has made the effort to get vaccine information to people in those rural areas, even traveling to 221 churches throughout six different counties in Eastern North Carolina to give that information directly to the community. 

Now with this grant, they plan to increase their outreach. 

“We have a project called Resilient Health that we started right after COVID-19 really started to impact our rural communities. We’re going to be able to expand that work, which is going to really be able to allow people to get information,” said Gibson.