Sam Carter

Sam Carter is the Executive Director of Carter’s Corner, a service provider in the Southside of Tallahassee whose mission is to serve individuals and families within the community through the provision of wraparound care which includes consulting, educational information and resources to provide long-term successful outcomes. Sam’s goal through this work is to help shape the lives, activities and careers of community members through mentorship, seeing their dreams come to fruition. He welcomes those he serves with open arms. Sam has had a positive, long-term impact on countless individuals and families in the Southside of Tallahassee. Sam sees his clients through the long-term, maintaining lifelong relationships with those he serves.

Through Carters Corner Sam provides fundraising services and per-game meals to teams to help ensure that kids have a nutritious meal before and after competition. Sam volunteers with and partners with several service providers in our area in a collaborative effort to better serve the community. For example, he helps transport kids to prisons to visit their parents and transports them to visit their mentors through an after-school program in order to decrease the strong likelihood that children of incarcerated parents have of later becoming incarcerated themselves. Sam also created a program that provides inner-city community outreach for kids by giving them opportunities to engage in extracurricular activities they normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to participate in due to lack of recourses or funding, such as fishing, football camps, and educational field trips. He also partners with Goodwill Industries to teach at-risk kids about non-traditional sports jobs as potential career paths. Sam started a community food distribution program that gives out food bags to community members every Tuesday in one of the City’s poorest neighborhoods, and has distributed fresh vegetables, bread and paper goods to over 500 families through the Living Stones Farm Share events held several times a year. He is a community coach and official and provides athletic consulting to parents of student athletes to help them navigate the complex rules and requirements to compete in sports in college. He organizes community health events and Social Service fairs to educate the community about the resources that are available. Sam conducts HIV outreach and testing along with linkage to care services to help families dealing with the virus and high-risk individuals within the community. He recently opened a service home to help individuals suffering with mental health problems to assure they have a safe place to live while getting the help they need to be active and productive community members.

While coaching at Troy University for one full year as a graduate student Sam commuted from Tallahassee to Troy, Alabama daily (a three-hour drive each way) without remuneration. Sam frequently travels to surrounding counties to conduct community lock-ins for children and he also works with faith-based communities to help those communities reach families with whom they do not normally interact. Sam has worked with local job services agencies to help individuals gain life skills for employment opportunities. Sam also started a prevention program at a local elementary school that provides leadership development trainings to the students and their caregivers. He has volunteered with Magellan Mental Health agency with foster children in our community. Sam also finds time to go back to Idaho Falls, Idaho and provides a free football camp there with his teammates from college.

As is evident from everything Sam has done and continues to do, he has a true passion to help people and his community, and he exhibits the sacrificial service that was the hallmark of a Humanitarian Service Award. Sam does the majority of this work as a volunteer without pay. The only revenue his agency receives is through his part-time position Tallahassee Community College. Sam has worked with Leon County Schools where he ran an at-risk program for kids who have been through the juvenile justice system due to gang involvement or civil citations

He partners, collaborates and volunteers without countless organizations, some of which were highlighted above: Technique Athletes, Good Sports, Big Bend Football Association, Living Stones International, Florida Department of Health, Leon County Schools, Food Ministries, Magellan Mental Health, Big Bend Cares, Leon County Health Department, Teen Challenge, Ernie Sims Foundation, Destiny Center Church, City of Tallahassee Parks and Recreation, Big Bend Pop Warner, Vision of Manhood, Leon County Probation, Disc Village, Palmer Monroe Teen Center, Idaho Youth Sports Academy and other small grassroots organizations.

Sam’s background is also highly relevant to his accomplishments and sacrificial service. Sam was raised on the Southside of Tallahassee by a single parent due to abuse and drug use by his father. Sam’s mom actually went into labor with Sam while at school (Rickards High). Sam has two brothers that know him as “Dad” due to their age differences and the care Sam provided to them. When his baby brother was born his mother went through postpartum depression and for a while had very little interaction with his brothers and even at times had thought of killing her sons. Sam and his brothers were removed from their mother and moved in with their grandmother until their mother was well. Due to a perceived learning disability, Sam was placed in special education classes from first grade through junior year at Rickards. Sam was expelled from school due to continuous trouble in school, was arrested multiple times as a teen and finally place in a youth enrichment program. Due to his athletic ability he was asked to play Junior College Football at Mississippi Delta and later earned his B.S. from Idaho State University. Sam returned to Tallahassee and started teaching and coaching, then later received an opportunity to work at Troy University earning his Masters in Sports Management.

Despite his early troubles Sam promised himself if he lived long enough (many of his friends growing up did not) to help people he was going to change kids’ lives so they would not have to grow up the way he grew up. He has certainly kept that promise to himself, changing and enriching the lives of countless individuals, children and families, as well as improving the community he grew up in.