Urban ministry empowers Galveston residents
Brandon Williams is youth and media director for Galveston Urban Ministries.
“Galveston Urban Ministries is a nonprofit where we work to empower. We help people in the North Broadway neighborhood, which is the lowest income neighborhood in Galveston. The average income is between like $7,000 and $16,000 a year. We want to help them figure out their skills and their gifting so that they can do for themselves.
“You know the thing about give a man a fish or teach him to fish? We want to go beyond that. We want people to be able to own the land and put fish in the pond so that they can fish whenever they want.
“One of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do was when we were planning to take the kids we work with to camp. We could have paid for the whole thing. But since we’re an empowering-based ministry, we wanted the students to have ownership of it. We told them that we would pay for half if they could fundraise the rest.
“To help them out, we held an art show. Our kids didn’t know anything about art or photography. So we brought in local photographers and some of my buddies from Houston. We taught the students photography, and we ended up putting on an art show at the end of the year. These were junior high students, mind you, and they raised $8,700. Our goal was $1,000.
“A bunch of local community and business leaders came. The students got to show their artwork and had people who were excited about it. They were so pumped. Their parents came and were a part of it, too.
“So for students who haven’t created anything, and then for their first piece to be something that’s awesome and they can be proud of, it was really cool.”
— Brandon Williams
Related:
