Doer of the Month: Deronda Metz

Director of Social Services, Salvation Army Center of Hope

When it comes to homelessness, there is no more heartbreaking aspect than children experiencing this trauma. In Charlotte, there is one woman who has been on the front lines of serving this need for thirty years: Deronda Metz.  Since 1998, Deronda has been the Director of Social Services at the Salvation Army shelter for women and children called The Center of Hope. 

This job has always been stressful but during 2020 with the additional threat of COVID, Deronda admits, “It’s been rough. No one has been taking any vacation.”  

But at the same time, Deronda is not quite yet ready to stop. She smiles and telling me, “It gives me purpose. I don’t know how not to be in the weeds.”

Deronda is both in the weeds and in the big strategy of solutions. During Covid, Deronda has been serving on the front lines every day alongside her staff of over fifty. That means working late on Christmas and Christmas Eve searching for beds for families. She manages two campuses serving over 1000 women and children daily. As of December 1, the Center of Hope is undergoing renovations so Deronda juggles 550 moms and kids who are currently being sheltered in five hotels. 

Long term strategies involve two other programs beyond emergency needs. With the partnership of Charlotte Housing Authority, Deronda developed the SHIP program off Wendover that includes 60 apartments to support low-income families. She also oversees another 120 units of what is called Rapid Rehousing which moves families out of the shelters. 

It’s a big, complicated job but Deronda says, “I always knew I would do something around helping people.”

Born and raised in Charlotte. Deronda was one of 8 siblings. When she was only 9 years old, her mother was 7 months pregnant and had an aneurysm. Neither her mother nor the baby could be saved. “That pain of loss started early for me, Deronda said. “It formed both my spirituality and my need to help and be of service.”

As a single father, Deronda’s dad raised Deronda in the Druid Hills community along with two aunts who helped with all the children. Her father spent 41 years working for Charlotte Pipe and Foundry and he encouraged his daughter to find a lifelong career as well. 

Deronda was very bright, almost too smart for a young Black girl growing up in the struggle of Southern schools that were learning how to integrate. She remembers with clarity how her fifth-grade teacher taught her a lesson she would never forget.

“She didn’t like me,” Deronda says. “She wouldn’t call on me in class and just put F’s on my papers.” 

Deronda tried to tell her father and sisters but they didn’t believe that Deronda hadn’t done anything to deserve the failing grades. “I had no one to speak for me,” she recalls. “And I still can’t believe I did it but I wrote that teacher a letter.”

At the time, her teacher was going on maternity leave so Deronda wrote that she would miss her. That must have shocked or maybe even shamed the teacher because when she returned to the classroom, Deronda never received the unwarranted Fs again.

“That was an important lesson for me. I learned how to use my voice. I learned how to survive racism in 5th grade. I learned how to use love to overcome,” Deronda said.

For over thirty years, Deronda has used love to overcome barriers and difficult circumstances with the families who come to the Center of Hope. She began as a 28-year old intern making $4.58 an hour. Deronda had graduated from Independence High School and after a demoralizing factory job, she heeded her father’s advice to find a career and graduated from Gardner Webb University. 

When she started at the Salvation Army, Deronda didn’t imagine she would have the position she has today. But her boss in 1998 encouraged Deronda to get her Master’s in Social Work so that she could lead the Shelter program. While she worked, Deronda graduated from USC and became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

As she learned to lead, Deronda also came to believe that you have to hold people accountable at the same time you show them how much you care. 

She tells me about one girl in particular who had a mom who couldn’t stay sober. Constantly drunk and disruptive, the mom and her children were going to be exited from the shelter. But the daughter pulled “Miss Deronda” aside and begged her not to throw them out. Deronda didn’t. Deronda laughs remembering how angry some staff was at her for breaking the rules. But the daughter was breaking her heart. 

“A few years ago, that daughter graduated from Chapel Hill!” Deronda said as proud of that young girl as if it were her own child.

In many ways, she is. Deronda says she is “married to the work” and although she has had a few long term relationships, she never married. Like the aunt who helped raise her, Deronda helps with her seven siblings’ children and the thousands of children who have come through the doors of the Salvation Army the past three decades.

“I have no regrets,” Deronda says and her beautiful smile makes me know it is so. “And I now have found a great love in my life who allows me to be me.”

Again, Deronda flashes a smile that shines this truth.

After thirty years in a career of helping the neediest in Charlotte, what will Deronda do? 

She plans to stay four more years until she is 62 and then retire. She dreams of traveling to her favorite continent, Africa. Deronda has already been to Ghana, Egypt, South Africa, and Kenya (three times) always for service trips. 

That serving piece is key for her. “I will always be connecting and serving,” she tells me. Deronda wants to mentor other social workers to help them live healthy balanced lives escaping the prevalent burnout in the nonprofit sector.

“I am who I am because people helped me,” Deronda said.

And like those who helped her, it seems Deronda will never stop helping others become who they were meant to be.