Several weeks ago I was blessed to be elected to the board of the Brookland Park Area Association. The purpose of this association is to promote the business interests of the merchants in the Brookland Park Boulevard area. As most of you know, we have prayed every week since last April for this four block
The Embrace Richmond sign is up on our new location at 113 W. Brookland Park Boulevard and our wonderful team of neighborhood volunteers is hard at work painting and making repairs to the facility. To the 85 donors that supported our “30 Days of Embrace Campaign,” we want to say “thank you” for your generous
I work with some of the most passionate dedicated people on the planet and we get to do some pretty cool stuff because we have some really generous friends. This past Tuesday was one of those days that made me stop, smile and say “Thank you God for letting me be a part of all
In a few weeks, our website will undergo some changes. These changes are in response to an internal shift we have been undergoing for several years. In the 8 years that Embrace Richmond has been working with low-wealth individuals, we have learned a lot: We learned that to solve the issue of homelessness, we do
In one month, Embrace Richmond will experience one of the largest shifts we have ever experienced – the elimination of our AmeriCorps program. We choose to no longer receive federal funds for many reasons (the rigidity of the program, the high cost of administration, the limitations on faith elements). We have been preparing for this
For four years, Embrace Richmond has operated an AmeriCorps program. This past fall, we decided that the 2011/12 service year would be our last year of AmeriCorps. It was a very hard decision, but one that we all knew was right for Embrace at this time. We decided to go out with a bang this
One of my most challenging tasks as an Executive Director is answering the question, “What does Embrace Richmond do?” When people focus on the “what”, I find they miss the more important question of “who.” The “what” sounds like this: “We helped the residents of Hillside Court start a community center that includes a computer
For more than two years, Embrace Richmond has been partnering with Shalom Farms to help address the lack of fresh vegetables in the Hillside Court community. For more than two years, Dominic Barrett, the Director of Shalom Farms, and I have dreamed of having a gardening team made up of Hillside residents with the goal
When Ryan Greene, Youth and Young Adult Minister from Shalom Baptist Church, first contacted me, his goal was to “plug” his young adult group called Agape into some kind of Christmas season service opportunity. Ryan got way more than he bargained for. I shared with Ryan that Embrace Richmond strives to build community and that
Wayne Cordeiro’s book, Doing Church as a Team, is one of my all time favorite books on church leadership. Wayne shares this story; Wayne grew up on an army base in Japan. One day his family went for a ride outside the base. When they stopped for lunch an old man at a booth caught