Brooklyn_Williams

Brooklyn Williams is a California native raised mostly in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area.  She is the daughter of a Mexican-American mother and African-American father, and is one of seven siblings.  At the age of 14, Brooklyn lost her older sister who was murdered during a home invasion.  The loss of her sister, along with the historic trauma her family experienced during the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, inspires Brooklyn to support families who have experienced trauma, and work towards violence prevention and social justice.  She is also the mother of adolescent twin sons and considers them her ultimate gift and motivation.

Brooklyn is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare (BA, 2000) and School of Education (MA, 2010) and has worked in Bay Area public schools, community organizations, and youth development programs for over 20 years.  Brooklyn specializes in program planning and development, professional development training for staff, as well as curriculum engineering with special focus on social and emotional intelligence, restorative justice, workforce development, and building youth leadership.

Brooklyn has supported alternative/continuation schools in Oakland and Alameda County for over 15 years and has been directing programs for youth involved in the juvenile justice system for over two decades.  This includes serving as Program Director for Project Re-Connect and the Freedom School at Camp Wilmont Sweeney.

In her current role as East Bay Program Director for New Door Ventures, Brooklyn is leading a program expansion effort to bring additional employment readiness services to transition aged youth living in poverty and facing significant employment barriers.  During a time when many black, brown, and asian pacific islander families are being priced out of their neighborhoods due to gentrification and the skyrocketing cost of living in the Bay Area, Brooklyn understands the importance of young people gaining 21st century transferable skills and contributing to their households’ ability to make ends meet.

Currently, Brooklyn is also serving as a member of the City of Oakland’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, where she advocates for increased social investments in youth and families, and supports the Youth Advisory Board.

With her passion for youth development and dedication to the community, Brooklyn appreciates the opportunity her work gives her to lead quality direct service efforts, as well as fight for systemic change.

 

Brooklyn Williams, Director Oakland, CA

QUOTE FROM SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:

“You can be free wherever you are!”

~Brooklyn Williams, Camp Sweeney Freedom School Director

Brooklyn_WilliamsEXCERPT FROM SAN LEANDRO TIMES ARTICLE:

“A lot of times a kid’s trouble started with money, and not wanting to be a financial burden to their family, said Brooklyn Williams, the director of the Freedom School program at the detention center.

So one of the classrooms this summer has a financial theme, another classroom’s theme is sports. There are lots of jobs in sports besides being an athlete – sports photography, nutritionist, equipment manager, said Williams.

At the heart of the Freedom School program is changing your self-image. Williams points out the students’ art work on the classroom walls, including the drawings students made of themselves.

The assignment was to make one side how society sees you, and the other how you see yourself, Williams explains. There’s a remarkable difference between the two sides of the papers the teens drew on – on one side are adjectives like thug and no good and drawings in the same vein, and on the other side the way the youths see themselves is good-hearted and somebody who wants to contribute to society.

“It’s about first changing yourself,” said Williams. “And then it’s family, community, country and the world. You might not be able to change your family but you can change the way your own children grow up.”

EXCERPT FROM EAST BAY TIMES ARTICLE:

OAKLAND — A program director at an East Bay youth detention facility recently likened the reentry of teen offenders into society to an alcoholic straight out of rehab, going to work at a bar.

But an East Bay legislator’s bill that juvenile offenders helped craft this past summer would address challenges faced by teens thrust back into the same toxic environments that got them into trouble in the first place.

For teens at the Freedom School at Camp Wilmont Sweeney, a juvenile delinquency program by the Alameda County Probation Department for boys ages 15-19, it was a real-life civics lesson. Their input on reentry challenges inspired Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Oakland, to write a bill advocating better services for youths exiting the juvenile justice system, including transitional housing.