Tuesday, December 10, 2024
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SouthCoast Community Foundation president and CEO returns to give back

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Melanie Edwards-Tavares started her career on the South Coast working for multiple nonprofits in New Bedford, where she was born and raised.

She started early. 

Growing up, her family didn’t have many resources and money was tight, but she grew up in a Cape Verdean and Portuguese family that always had an open door and would share what they had with their neighbors.  

“The house was always open, and there was always something on the stove, anybody who came in, everybody was fed,” she said. 

That door included children and teens who were drawn to both Melanie and her mother. While living in New Bedford’s United Front Housing Development as a teen, she and her mother Louan Tavares started the Positive Influence Peer Leadership program to teach teens like herself about civic responsibility. 

Edwards-Tavares, the new SouthCoast Community Foundation president and CEO, said she believes this has made a huge impact on how she sees the world, how her children see the world and how she hopes her grandchildren will see the world.  

“I think it was just naturally engrained in me that this sense of community goes beyond just you and an action,” she said. “It really is about how you demonstrate your love for those that you know and also those that you don’t.” 

The return home 

Edwards-Tavares, who lives in Fairhaven, said what brought her to philanthropy was wanting to see things from multiple perspectives.  

Melanie Edwards-Tavares new Southcoast Community Foundation President

She was serving as a director of capacity building and nonprofit support for the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving when the pandemic hit and got to see a major transition take place in philanthropy and what happens when people pool their resources, time and expertise together in a crisis.  

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