“This will not be my last one,” YELLS Achievement Club member and Franklin Gateway resident excitedly shared as she closed out her first community mixer. Brenda Gregory, a grandmother of one of our YELLS youth, hosted her first community mixer as a part of her chosen Achievement Club goals, and it was a major success. As a testament to the power of United Way’s Achievement Club model, Ms. Brenda merged her own personal growth with a plan to uplift and strengthen her neighborhood.
Numerous community members and members of neighboring communities came to support the event. Attendees did not know just how much they would gain from this mixer, titled “The Removal of the Mask” … but with many tears shed and unveiling of stories, Ms. Brenda’s inspirational event helped to continue that positive shift of changing lives in the Franklin Gateway community.
This event was a true community mixer, allowing community members a chance to share their perspectives and combine their stories for healing and understanding. Ms. Brenda facilitated the event by inviting a panel of three other individuals willing to share their stories. The motivational panelists included a YELLS Community Action Café alumna, Yadeihja Butler, community Minister Robert Wright, and Mechelle Stephens, author of Unmasked and Unashamed.
Ms. Brenda did an amazing job incorporating various parts of the community in her event. She created a welcoming platform for different age ranges within the community and various YELLS parents and adults, as well as youth, current and alumni, were brought in to help make this event a success. Our YELLS teens worked with our elementary youth to create various masks that would be placed along the walls to decorate the event space.
Greatly spread among the audience were Brenda’s fellow Achievement Club members. With her final remarks, she stated how difficult it was to continue with this goal, and how she thought many times about calling it off. She continued on to express her gratitude toward her family and YELLS staff, Christina Rodriguez and Renelda Batts, who continuously pushed her forward toward this goal: “I used to be afraid to speak out. I was afraid to continue with this event, but I wanted to give back to this community and the people that have inspired me to do this. This will not be my last one!”
We’re so proud of Ms. Brenda’s hard work! As a true Community Champion, she is leading grassroots change, healing, and transformation.
