Moss Point resident Charlotte Brown has sparked a trend for channeling positive vibes back into her hometown. The mission is the focal point for Brown’s We Are Moss Point (WAMP), a small nonprofit volunteer organization that is all about helping the city and local community and adding to its betterment.

“If you live somewhere – wherever it is – whether you’re from there originally or not, if you live there, then you should want it to be the best, the cleanest, and the safest it can be.”

Charlotte Brown, founder, We Are Moss Point (WAMP)

     Brown is WAMP’s founder and main organizer. She says those who volunteer with the organization “want to help out where they can” as the nonprofit aims to nurture positivity by providing the key to making events great for community members in its home city, Moss Point, and the larger Jackson County area it serves.

     Brown said WAMP strives to continually become bigger and better. She said the organization specializes in helping make any event a standout success by giving it that special something to really pop. The nonprofit also has a lot to offer younger generations in terms of guidance, especially through showcasing the accomplishments of influential people from their own communities – recognized and honored as “Legends” at the Living Legends Ball that We Are Moss Point hosts annually.
     The purpose of the event, according to Brown, is to “[honor] people in the local community who are doing extraordinary things with their money, time, and influence” and who are giving back to the community as well as shifting its trajectory into a better direction than what it currently is. This is just one of the ways that WAMP is helping give Moss Point back a more positive image, as We Are Moss Point’s overarching mission is to empower the various communities within the Jackson County area by improving the well-being of the people there through WAMP’s partnerships, actions, and initiatives.
     We Are Moss Point regularly collaborates with local officials of Moss Point in order to support programs that meet community needs, create a better environment where people can grow and succeed, and live up to their legacy in the goal of shaping a brighter future for coming generations.

     Ennit Morris, District 2 Supervisor for Jackson County, notes the impact that We Are Moss Point has made on the city’s morale and the amazing work Brown has done for the community.
     “Mrs. Charlotte Brown is doing an excellent job with Moss Point,” Morris said. “The things she’s doing; she’s recognizing leaders – past leaders in Moss Point – and I think it’s a good thing she’s doing for Moss Point.”
     Morris said that Brown is helping people see Moss Point in a different way.
     “At first, you would think of Moss Point every time something happened and just get dragged…now you’re not looking at Moss Point like that,” said Morris. “You’re looking at Moss Point as a city like Ocean Springs.”
     Brown, who manages We Are Moss Point, started the nonprofit volunteer organization in 2018. In addition to running WAMP since its foundation, Brown has been a social worker for the last 25 years doing everything from forensic interviewing to teaching classes on anger management, case work, and much more. She was recently recognized as a recipient of Gulf Coast Woman Magazine’s 100 Successful Women to Know award in 2024. She was selected for the honor from a pool of 820 women nominated.
     Brown said she felt led to start WAMP because “every time I turned on the news, I would hear negative comments about my town. It never failed. It was always something negative. That’s all they would report, and I couldn’t understand that.” Moss Point is even referred to as the ‘Black Eye of the Coast,’” she said. “We have a beautiful city, a beautiful culture, beautiful surroundings, and all of that needs to be amplified; not the ugliness that comes with every city.”

     In order to combat the negative outlook associated with her hometown, Brown started sharing the extraordinary things she saw the town’s people doing every day as well as Moss Point’s rich culture which was being overlooked by the media.
     “I just made it my business to start promoting the good stuff,” Brown said. “I would even send it into the newspaper. If they didn’t have it or report it, I would send it in and say, ‘Hey, look at this positive event that just happened.’”
     Though the current Moss Point is not the same city that she remembers growing up in, Brown recognizes that “[it] took a while for it to get this way, so it will take a while to undo it, but I see the positive…stuff being shared on TV as well as social media.” Brown states that We Are Moss Point is “doing huge things down here” in the city and that she “sees a difference” in the portrayal and reception of Moss Point at both the media and community level, which is WAMP’s ultimate pursuit.
     While the name is We Are Moss Point, Brown specifies that her organization does not serve only the Moss Point area, as it started in Moss Point because it is where Brown grew up and currently resides, but now is operational throughout all of Jackson County. WAMP’s main purpose is to fill in any gaps within a variety of local events by supporting, educating, and nurturing the vibrant city and spirit of Moss Point and its surrounding communities, which they do by supplying anything an event is missing to make it great. Brown said, “You may be having a backpack drive, and you have the backpacks, and you have the paper, and you have the binders, but you don’t have the pens, the markers, or the highlighters. We’re the ones that come in and do that.”

     WAMP assists with many events throughout the year, and they host three of their own yearly, including the Living Legends Ball, a Toys for Tots drive, as well as a different charitable event every March.
     WAMP’s Living Legends Ball, held every year on the last Saturday in July, is the biggest community-wide event where anyone can go. It began 11 years ago but has run for 10, as it was inoperable during the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic. Honorees of the Living Legends Ball “have to be people that have contributed exceptionally to the community…and way beyond the community. A lot of them have contributed nationally or in other states or throughout Mississippi,” says Brown. “Definitely to the betterment of their local community, because everything starts on a local level.”

     While people selected for the Ball were originally specific to Moss Point, WAMP has since branched out to include individuals and businesses throughout Jackson County who are considered “Legends” by WAMP’s board and by the overall community. Each year, the Ball honors one man and one woman. And as of 2021, one small business, too. The first recipient of the Small Business of the Year award was Family Frozen Foods, a grocery store that is very community-minded with locations in Pascagoula and Ocean Springs. The second business honored was Buddies House of Food, a family-owned and operated barbecue place, which in addition to winning the Small Business of the Year award in 2022 also catered the food for the Living Legends Ball in 2023.
     From its inception, the Living Legends Ball has seen significant growth. Starting with only 22 participants, last year’s event saw just shy of 100 guests, which Brown says she is very happy about. She hopes that it continues to grow so that one day the Ball can “honor more than two Legends and one business, to honor several.”

     Brown states that We Are Moss Point hosts the annual Living Legends Ball because “We don’t want to wait until they’ve [Legends] passed on…we want to give them their flowers now” since even though “nobody started out doing it [contributing to their communities] just to get appreciation” she argues that “people would love it if you did recognize their contributions. That’s why we’re doing it.” The Living Legends Ball has the additional benefit of encouraging younger generations to do extraordinary things and providing youth with a foundation to branch out of by showing them what they can become through the community members WAMP honors.
     We Are Moss Point is an entirely volunteer-based nonprofit organization, meaning that no one is paid assisting with events, it is purely because they want to help their community. All proceeds earned during the annual Living Legends Ball are given back as a scholarship to one youth in the community with the recipient changing per year. Along with awarding a scholarship every year, WAMP honors a small business in the Jackson County area in addition to two individuals, which is beneficial to the chosen business, as it provides the opportunity to spread their name and potentially generate more business. Brown states that Buddies House of Food – the second winner of the Small Business of the Year award – “had a chance to showcase [his food] by catering the event last year. There were 92 people at the event last year, so 92 people got to taste his food.”

     In 2023, We Are Moss Point hosted a Toys for Tots drive enabling the nonprofit to give out 250 toys during Christmas and a Back-to-School drive that provided a variety of school supplies. WAMP also holds a different event each March, with the next one being a field trip for children to tour the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., planned for March 2, 2025.
     WAMP has been a long-standing partner with 200 Man Stand – an organization based out of Nashville, Tenn., that We Are Moss Point sponsors to do a monthly cleanup in Moss Point to keep the streets clean. The organization has also sponsored several charity drives in the past for the homeless where volunteers gathered and dispersed food, clothes, and other goods to displaced persons.
     Originally a founding member of Moss Point Visionary Circle, a nonprofit organization focused on redeveloping Moss Point economically through a “resurgence of health, wholeness, vitality, and economic development,” Brown eventually diverged into starting her own organization (We Are Moss Point), though she remains a close supporter of Moss Point Visionary Circle and presently works as its Public Relations Director.
     The next Living Legends Ball is set for July 27, 2024, and is located at 1819 Pascagoula St., Pascagoula, MS, in Schneider Hall. Tickets must be purchased for entry and can be bought here: WAMP Living Legends Ball Tickets 2024.
     Currently, WAMP is in the process of working with the City of Moss Point to obtain a building, as both Brown and city officials are interested in We Are Moss Point having a physical location community members can visit. Brown is excited for the opportunities a building will open up for her organization, as she plans to eventually expand services that We Are Moss Point has to offer and expects WAMP to hold events in the space once or twice a month.
     Tim McCorvey, the owner of the IT firm Catalyst, does all of the IT and digital content for WAMP’s official website, WeAreMossPoint.com.
     For information about upcoming events or to learn more about how to support the organization, please visit We Are Moss Point’s social media pages WAMP Facebook and WAMP YouTube.

On the cover: We Are Moss Point’s Charlotte Brown coordinates a 2023 Back-to-School Drive to help parents and students get off to a great start for the new school year.

Maya Wood

Southern Miss Gulf Scholar! Maya Wood is a native Mississippi resident currently working on obtaining her bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Southern Mississippi ‘s Gulf Coast campus. She plans to continue on to a master’s degree with an emphasis in literature or creative writing and is currently a member of the inaugural class of the nationally recognized Gulf Scholars Program that focuses on supporting states and communities along the coast. Her stories highlight local citizens, businesses and organizations and their contributions to providing “the good life” for Mississippi residents and visitors. Maya’s long-term goal is to do what she loves full time: work as a writer and eventually become an author, as she finds great joy in reading and wants to spread that feeling to others.