 Dear friend and neighbor, Those who spent any amount of time around Voices for Earth Justice over the last few years know L'Oreal Hawkes-Williams. L'Oreal first came to VEJ as a garden intern in 2016. Two years later, she became VEJ's contract garden program manager. Anyone who came to VEJ's Hope Garden since 2018 learned from L'Oreal and worked with her side-by-side. In 2019, L'Oreal started VEJ's Sunday Dinners program as a monthly community meal at Hope House & Garden. In 2020, L'Oreal started her own nonprofit, NEW LEAF Detroit, to teach Detroiters how to take control of their own healthy, sustainable lifestyles. VEJ contracted NEW LEAF to run its Hope Garden programs in 2020 and 2021. L'Oreal is passionate about Earth justice, but in ways that are as practical as parenting her three children. In fact, it was her children who inspired her to start on the path that led to Voices for Earth Justice. L'Oreal was working as a Meijer cashier several years ago when she saw a news report on a national lettuce recall. That news report got her thinking about what she fed her kids. She didn't know what was in the food she gave them or where that food originated. L'Oreal resolved to learn to grow her family's food. She set out to lead her family toward self-sufficiency and sustainability. That love for her family became L'Oreal's passion and purpose for life. She went back to school, eventually got a scholarship to get her degree at the University of Michigan, and finally led to Voices for Earth Justice and NEW LEAF Detroit. L'Oreal's husband, Dennis, was with her every step of the way. Dennis not only worked to provide most of the financial support the family needed, he became L'Oreal's hardest-working and most loyal volunteer. Most people who ever worked at VEJ's Hope Garden would know Dennis because he often came to work alongside his wife. Whenever Dennis was at the garden with L'Oreal, their three kids, Corey, Taylor, and Dennis, Jr., were almost always working with them, too. On December 13, 2021, Dennis suffered a massive stroke. This stroke paralyzed the left side of his body and affected his cognitive abilities. Since Dennis is young, his doctors hope that he can make a strong recovery in time. However, the foreseeable future will be difficult in the extreme with no guarantees. This family is living through a nightmare than any one of us would think of as our worst. Dennis has been in the hospital since the stroke and L'Oreal has been at his side the entire time. His doctors hope to send him to a rehab facility in the near future. There is no timeline for how long he will be in rehab. However, once he goes home, he will need constant care and help for quite some time. L'Oreal is taking on the role of Dennis's caregiver. In addition to her contract job with Voices for Earth Justice, L'Oreal also works other contract and part-time jobs to supplement the family's income. However, she is stopping work outside the home so that she can give Dennis the care he needs. Dennis is the primary income-earner for the family and will not be able to work for a long time. L'Oreal reducing her hours or stopping some jobs altogether to care for Dennis puts the family in a very bad financial position for the foreseeable future. While Dennis recovers and L'Oreal cares for him (plus their kids!), money will not be coming in to pay for food, rent, school expenses, transportation, and utilities. Since you know that L'Oreal teaches self-sufficiency, you may guess that she is not the kind of person to ask for help unless she really needs it. One of L'Oreal's friends, Lakwiita Garbarini, started a GoFundMe page to raise funds to cover the Hawkes-Williams family living expenses for the next few months. L'Oreal agreed to let Lakwiita do this for her and she agreed to let me share it with you, the Voices for Earth Justice community. So I am asking you to come alongside Dennis, L'Oreal, and their kids as they try to recover from this crisis in their lives. Out of your abilities and means, I hope you will share some of your plenty with them in their time of lesser abilities and lesser means. Please make a generous contribution here and please spread the word. If you have any questions or suggestions for other ways you may help, please reach out to me at (313) 355-6042 or [email protected]. Grace and peace, BT Irwin, Voices for Earth Justice
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Late in the summer of 2021, Voices for Earth Justice executive director BT Irwin announced his plan to step down at the end of the year. In October 2021, VEJ's board of directors began a search for Irwin's successor.
As the year comes to a close, the timeline for VEJ's leadership change is changing due to a lack of applicants for the executive director position. As the search for VEJ's next leader continues, Irwin agreed to stay on as executive director for a short while longer. "We're doing a hard thing during hard times," said Irwin. "It's hard to find someone who fits all of the qualifications for the job, but who is able and willing to do the job part-time for part-time pay." Irwin pointed out that both executive directors who served VEJ during its 20-year history were able to do so because of special personal circumstances. "Patty Gillis, our founder, served for more than 15 years mostly as a volunteer," said Irwin. "She had special circumstances in her life that allowed her to do that." When Irwin succeeded Gillis in September 2017, he was a full-time consultant and project manager for government and nonprofit agencies. He took the VEJ job "on the side" so that he could get his "skin in the game" again with a mission and organization that he believed to be of great importance. Since his primary income came from other sources and his self-employment gave him flexibility, Irwin was able to take on the VEJ job. In August 2020, Irwin decided to close his consulting and project management business. That decision made it necessary for him to think about full-time employment (to provide for his family), something that is not an option at VEJ because of its small annual revenue and operating budget. "I told the board in late 2020 that I would need to seek full-time employment elsewhere, but that I would stay with VEJ through the end of 2021," said Irwin. "None of us counted on things being so weird in the world more than one year later!" Irwin said that his work with VEJ showed him that changing culture, policies, and systems are critical and crucial to the environmental justice movement. For that reason, he is seeking to change careers, moving out of local nonprofit management and into foundation, government, or university work. That change in career plans is making it harder to find opportunities, since it means moving into a whole new field. "There are plenty of jobs like the ones that I held over the last 20 years," said Irwin. "But I'm trying to get into something where a lot of other people are ahead of me in line. It's just going to take a little longer for the right door to open." The delay in his own job search plus the delay in finding enough candidates for the VEJ job means that Irwin and VEJ will continue to work together for a while longer. "The plan for leadership transition at VEJ is still in place," said Irwin. "It's just moving at a slower pace and on a different timeline than we imagined last summer." Irwin said that, for the right person, the VEJ leadership role is an excellent opportunity. "Voices for Earth Justice is, to my knowledge, the only environmental justice nonprofit in Michigan that focuses on building an interfaith community through prayer, education, and action," said Irwin. "You cannot hope to achieve much for environmental justice if you don't have access to a fellowship of people who come from all walks of life, but who share a passion for Earth justice that comes from the common elements of their different faiths. VEJ is growing that fellowship." Irwin said that VEJ first appealed to him because of its potential to draw leaders together from southeast Michigan's diverse faith communities. "In my four years at VEJ, we have not even come close to realizing the potential for building alliances among faith groups in southeast Michigan," said Irwin. "The programming we started over the last four years pointed us in that direction and began to assemble a core group of people from several faith backgrounds, but there is so much opportunity to do ten times more in the years ahead. My goal was to just lay a solid foundation on which the next executive director will build." Irwin added that in addition to strong programming, the next executive director will get to lead the first phase of construction for the Hope Park Neighborhood Land Use and Vision, including Hope House & Garden. "Buildings and grounds can be assets or liabilities," said Irwin. "I think we have Hope House & Garden closer than it's ever been to being a true asset for the community and for the organization. We did a lot of work to activate and stabilize Hope House & Garden and work with the community to make a master plan for its development and programming in the years ahead. We have a fund that is set aside just for programs and projects at that location, so the Hope Park Project vision can start to become a reality right away." Irwin said his goal from Day One (September 11, 2017) was always to "set the table" for his successor. "I'd like to think that the person who does this job after me will find that he or she has the resources and the room to get straight to work making things happen," said Irwin. "And by that I mean making things happen that I was never able to do because I either didn't have the organizational stability, the resources, or I didn't have the gifts and the vision. For the person who has the gifts and the vision that I didn't have, I'd like to think that VEJ will be an amazing opportunity for her or him to call together a community that moves mountains that stand in the way of Earth justice." Those who wish to apply or inquire may email [email protected]. |
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Mailing address: 15894 Greydale Street, Detroit, Michigan 48223 Email: [email protected] Phone: (313) 355-6042
Mailing address: 15894 Greydale Street, Detroit, Michigan 48223 Email: [email protected] Phone: (313) 355-6042