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The Board of Directors of St. Johns County Continuum of Care is committed to our mission of leading the effort to prevent and end homelessness, bringing together resources and partnerships to make homelessness rare, brief, and one-time. Meet Victoria Pepper, Civic Action Group Liaison, CARE. Although Vicki Pepper has been coming to St. Augustine since the 1980s—especially after her late parents moved here in 2001 after their retirement—she did not actively engage in the life of the community until shortly before moving to St. Augustine in 2018, after she retired from a career in public service as an attorney with various agencies of the United States Government. In her semi-retirement, Vicki has embarked on a “second career” as a part-time professor, teaching undergraduates for the Law Program at Flagler College and more recently as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. Since moving to St. Augustine, Vicki has become increasingly involved in our local community. For example, she volunteers for the GTM Research Reserve (Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve) in Ponte Vedra. For about three and a half years, she has also participated in St. Augustine’s ongoing cross-cultural Community Conversation, led by her late father’s pastor at Grace United Methodist Church. Her involvement in the Community Conversation has led directly to her burgeoning “third career” as a volunteer community advocate because over two years ago, she became a founding member of the local informal, independent civic action group CARE (Community Advocates for Racial Equity) that grew out of Community Conversation. Later, in 2021, Vicki was asked to join and actively engage in the St. Johns Community Remembrance Project, the local partner of the National Community Remembrance Project of the Equal Justice Initiative. More recently, Vicki was elected to the Friends of Lincolnville Board of Directors, which operates the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center. Homelessness and affordable housing—which are interrelated—are top priority issues for CARE. As a result, Vicki attended the Continuum of Care (CoC) General Membership meetings on behalf of CARE for quite some time to further CARE’s knowledge of the issues and to identify opportunities for CARE advocacy to support the work of the Continuum and its constituent members. Vicki believes that advocacy can play a crucial role in changing policy. Most recently, she was nominated to join, and in April, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the SJC Continuum of Care (CoC). She has been pleased to contribute her perspective and community advocacy skills to the CoC Board's important work. Learn more about St. Johns County Continuum of Care at www.stjohnscountycoc.org .