Tennia Walker joins Healthy Learner as AmeriCorps program coordinator

Healthy Learners has named Tennia Walker as the AmeriCorps program coordinator. Healthy Learners is a faith-based non-profit that works collaboratively with communities, schools, healthcare providers and families to remove health barriers to learning through screening, referral and access to medical services.

In her role as AmeriCorps program coordinator, Walker provides program coordination and administration of the Healthy Learners AmeriCorps program, supporting multiple AmeriCorps team members and Healthy Learners staff in their efforts to provide access to essential health care to children in need across South Carolina. The AmeriCorps program at Healthy Learners will enable the organization to serve more children in more communities across the state.

“It brings me so much joy to be able to make a positive impact throughout many communities. Working with Healthy Learners is a humbling experience that I do not take for granted,” said Walker.

Walker received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Coastal Carolina University and a master’s degree in public administration from Arkansas State University. She has served two terms of AmeriCorps as an AmeriCorps Vista with the United Way of the Midlands Reading Consortium as well as a member of the AmeriCorps NCCC/FEMA Corps.

Most recently, she was a financial aid officer at South University, where she worked with students and parents to create financial aid plans to suit their needs and help them understand those plans, among a variety of job duties. She has also worked as a financial services processor at PENSCO Trust Company and as a Denver Math Fellow in the Denver Public Schools. She is a volunteer tutor with the Midlands Reading Consortium and volunteers with the Salvation Army.

“Tennia is very familiar with the AmeriCorps program and with the mission of Healthy Learners, having spent a year helping to increase literacy levels in early grades in Title I schools with the Midlands Reading Consortium and her AmeriCorps work in the Atlantic Region,” said Amy Splittgerber, executive director of Healthy Learners. “She is an excellent addition to our team and will be essential to helping us expand our ability to serve more children through AmeriCorps team members so we can ensure South Carolina’s children are healthy and ready to learn.”

About Healthy Learners

Healthy Learners was founded in 1992 based on the belief that children learn better when they are healthy. A ministry of the Sisters of Charity Health System, Healthy Learners is devoted to removing children’s health barriers to learning with love and compassion. In order for our communities to thrive, it is essential that children are healthy and well-educated, graduate from high school on time, and perform at their full potential. The prevalence of health barriers to learning is higher in children of color or in poverty, and these same children bear more burden of disease—in part due to their poor access to healthcare services. This is where Healthy Learners steps in to provide access to these critical healthcare services so that all children can be at their best in the classroom. Healthy Learners has five regional programs that serve 150 schools across twelve (12) South Carolina school districts. For more information, see healthylearners.com.