Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of portraits of four New Jersey residents notable for their efforts to improve the lives of others locally or statewide. Read Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s portraits.

Who: Christine Bell  

What she does: Executive director and founder of 100Kidsinc. in Jersey City; community social worker at Alliance Community Healthcare, Inc. in Jersey City.

Where she wants to make a difference: Through her nonprofit organization and her work as a social worker, Christine Bell aims to provide a host of resources — including parenting and mental health services — to families, children and young adults in the South Ward of Jersey City. With 100Kidsinc., Bell works to provide access to programs she never had as a young person while caring for her mother in the South Ward. By doing so, she intends to combat a historical lack of access to behavioral health services that meet the needs of people in that part of the city.

The road to 100kidsinc: Launched in August 2020, the Jersey City nonprofit aims to promote the overall stability and well-being of vulnerable families, children and young people from birth through 26 through a host of programs that include a six-week workshop for parents and caregivers of children with disabilities, such as mental health education and awareness seminars. Currently, Bell is the only employee at the nonprofit but is looking to secure more funding in the new year to hire additional staff.  

Where the name comes from: “I remember lying in the bed and praying. And I said, ‘If we can reach one kid, we can reach 100 … Imagine what a hundred kids can do. And then I said, ‘You know what? We’re 100Kidsinc.’”  

Family roots: The inspiration for 100Kidsinc. stems from Bell’s childhood growing up in Jersey City during the early 1990s. “I was raised in an environment where mental health was apparent, but it wasn’t talked about,” she said. Beginning at eight years old, Bell often accompanied her mother, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and anxiety, to Community Line (C-Line Community Outreach), a community-based organization where her mother received case management services that included women’s support groups, housing and someone to talk to.  

Next-door training: The outreach center was next door to the family’s apartment on Martin Luther King Drive, Bell said, and it was here that she began volunteering and listening to the experiences of women who had survived domestic violence.  

“It introduced me to what a community organization can be and the help it can provide when you have access. And I don’t recall them ever turning anyone away. In my heart, that’s where the seed was planted into me,” Bell said.   

Back to school … and church: Bell received her master’s degree in criminal justice and administration from New Jersey City University in 2010 and eventually went on to pursue a second master’s degree in social work from Fordham University, graduating in 2018.  

While pursuing the degree from Fordham, Bell began an internship at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, which helped her to become a stronger advocate, she said. “I had the … lived experience and exposure and education, to a degree, but working at Riverside Church showed me just how instrumental community-based services are.”

In 2019, along with her colleague Jade de Saussure from Fordham, Bell began working on creating 100Kidsinc., although the process of setting up the nonprofit organization from scratch proved very frustrating.  

Out of pocket: “Everything we do comes out of pocket,” said Bell.  

The only two organizations that currently provide support to 100Kidsinc. are It Takes A Village, a toddler and preschool center in Jersey City that provides operational space to Bell’s nonprofit, and Alliance Community Healthcare, which provides additional mental health clinical services.  

“Without It Takes A Village, we wouldn’t even be able to operate,” Bell said.  

Goals for 2024: Looking ahead to next year, Bell is hoping to secure greater financial stability for the nonprofit in order to hire additional staff and to develop an “advocacy framework” to begin petitioning for more funding from city, state and county governments.  

“The work we’re doing now — and being a microlevel, grassroot organization within a 12-to-15-block radius in the South Ward of Jersey City — allows individuals to walk to the safe haven,” Bell said.  

“It allows children who start to recognize our name and our logo and what we do and families to say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with my child. I don’t know what’s going on with myself. But I know this organization right here [that] deals with mental health. Let me reach out to them.”  

Opening image: Left to right: Nilanjana Ghosh, Carmen Salavarrieta, Julie Blumenfeld, Christine Bell (Taylor Jung/NJ Spotlight News)