What's Your Why?
By Ericka Wooten, Director of Culture and Values
We explore a simple, yet powerful question.
What’s Your Why? Why are you committed to creating a South Carolina where no one is burdened by poverty — especially when this work is hard, change is slow, and the barriers are entrenched, nuanced, and accepted?
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” — Colossians 3:23
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What’s Your Why?
By Ericka Wooten, Director of Culture and Values
If you asked me What’s my why – the answer is pretty simple – love of God, and love of the people He made, especially those marginalized and exploited.
I believe every person carries the dignity of being made in God’s image — not some people, not people who look a certain way or love a certain way or were born into certain circumstances, but every person, full stop. No line we draw between us — race, gender, sexuality, poverty, none of it — changes that truth. And I believe just as strongly that poverty was never God’s plan for anyone. Scripture tells us to look at the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet our Heavenly Father feeds them (Matthew 6:26). If God cares for the birds, how much more does He care for us — the ones made in His image? God did not design a world of scarcity. We did. And I believe part of my calling is to help repair that.
So when Colossians 3:23 tells me to work as though I’m working for the Lord and not for human masters, it doesn’t feel like a verse about effort or attitude. It feels like a description of what I’m actually doing and what the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine have been doing for 175 years. I feel honored and blessed to be a part of that legacy and to work for an organization that centers this truth in all the ways that matter.
That’s my why — rooted in faith, and in the belief that dignity and abundance are meant for everyone, not just a chosen few. I am sharing my why not because it’s the only right answer, but because I think the question itself is worth asking. Whatever your reasons are for doing this work, I’d invite you to name them for yourself. You might find, like I did, that something steadier than a job description has been holding your work up all along.
I also want to be clear that you don’t have to share my faith, or use the word “calling,” or believe in God at all, for your why to matter here. Some of you do social justice work because of a faith tradition of your own — Christian or otherwise. Some of you do it because you grew up watching someone you love go without, and you decided no one else should have to. Some of you do it simply because you have a deep, unshakeable belief that people deserve to be treated with fairness and dignity, full stop — no theology required. That belief is not a lesser reason to be here. It’s just as needed, just as welcome, and just as essential to this work as mine is.
The Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina is stronger because it holds people who arrive at justice, dignity, and love of neighbor from different roads. If yours doesn’t run through scripture, it doesn’t need to. What matters is that you know your road, and that you keep walking it alongside the rest of us.
So, what’s your why? Take some time to sit with that question — really sit with it. Return to it often, especially when the work feels insurmountable and progress feels slow or invisible. Your why will call you back to love, to fairness, to equity, to dignity. It will call you home.
