Spotlight New Jersey: Hunger Free Unity in the Community

Spotlight New Jersey: Beyond The Boogie Dance Company in Montclair

Spotlight New Jersey: Town Clock Community Development Corp.

Spotlight New Jersey: Middlesex Regional Black Nurses Association

Spotlight New Jersey: Work Hard Dress Right in Newark

Spotlight New Jersey: Professional skateboarder and graphic designer Judi Oyama

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News 12 Staff

32spotlightNJ2_2024-03-02-09-20-12

We are talking with four members of the Central Jersey Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Club Incorporated. Let's go to you, Denise and talk about your involvement with the club. Well, I've been a member of the Central Jersey Club now for 21 years. Um been a life member for 11. I was the second club president to serve two year term um in the club uh membership director. Oh, gosh, that's a lot of hats to wear. I was gonna say I wear, I still wear quite a few hats. Uh Right now I'm co-chair of sponsorship and grant program. Um Fundraising. I'm a national appointed national um director of uh membership for live members. And I'm also um appointed the corporate advisory for uh sponsorship for national and I also serve on the northeast district, our district um bylaws committee and other committees. So I wear several hats. I forgot her most. She forgot her most important hat. That's my aunt. Let's talk about that family relationship here while we're on. She's your aunt and that's my mom. And let's have your mom talk about her involvement. Well, her mom has been in the club for, for almost 40 years. And I was brought into the club by one of my mentors, someone who said, look, you need to be in this organization because it's community minded. And she knew that I liked helping especially young students as a teacher. So I've been in the club, I've held several offices and um I believe in my continuation of mentoring. Even I mentor a lot of the young ladies who are in our club. That's a great legacy. Let's talk about those community programs. Yes, let's talk about those programs, madam first VP. So our most important program that we do right now is we're working on Founders Day. So we're celebrating the wonderful founders of our National Association. Our Founders Day will be held in, in April 13th where we're gonna honor honor the phenomenal women that um founded the national organization. We give out scholarships at our Founder's Day celebration. And over the club's history, we've given out over $400,000 in scholarship to area of high school seniors. Um We also give out community based awards at that program. Um And so we have a wide number of programs across all different um aspects including I think you just said it all. I think you just said it all. But one thing I do want to mention is that the awards that madam president has been referencing, referencing. We award our members also because we have phenomenal members in the organization. It's not just looking outside the organization, we have members who have done phenomenal things in the organization. And at noon, the Central Jersey Club talks more about the community programs they offer.

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32spotlightnj3_2024-03-02-12-41-03

We are speaking with the Central Jersey Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Club, Incorporated Austin. You wanted to continue the thought about the community programs that you all administer. Yes. One of the greatest things about the Central Jersey Club is you always see us. We are involved in our so, so drastically. Um We partner with different organizations such as the Sea Grant, New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium, the League of Women voters, the local charter schools, um A few of the local churches we partner with to do our different programs, whether it's giving back and shelters or whether we are just providing different services for the community, health um workshops and seminars. So we are extremely active in our community. We love to support, we love to work and then just show and give back to those who are working with us and who gave to us as well. Why is that so important to the club? It's important because uh the, the community respond to, to us and we respond to their needs and they're very open to what we present to them in the community. So if we say we're having an event and the information's dispersed to the community. The response is awesome. So we do well with just being ourselves and being out in the community and presenting to them um ideas while we talk about the Martin Luther King program, um It's free to the community which we have annually. We just celebrated our, what was it? Uh It was like 19th annual fo uh Martin Martin Luther King program. And we have sponsors that sponsor us to have these programs because they're so welcome to the community. That's great that you do have the sponsors. Wow. I guess they, they believe in what you all are doing. How many clubs do you all have? We have a total of 90/90 clubs nationally and in the state of New Jersey, approximately five clubs. So we have clubs all over the uh state um ranging from the Teaneck area, um North Jersey unit all the way down to Atlanta City. So we have a lot of clubs spanning the States. We are the larger club in the state and we're also one of the larger clubs in the northeast district which spans the States of New York and Connecticut. How many members would you say you have a little over 60 members for the club? But the organization itself is 17, is uh 1790 something across the country. You all were talking about the different levels that you have within your club, the different clubs, tell me about that. So um we start off at, at the youth club level. So for 12 years old, you can start the organization as a youth member. Um We go all the way up from uh 12 to 18 as a youth. Our young adult is um up to the age of 34 years old and our regular adult membership starts at 35 tomorrow at 6 a.m. Club members talk about their educational and scholarship programs.

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33SPOTLIGHTNJ4_2024-03-03-08-56-44

We are talking with members of the Central Jersey Club. Kenisha Jones is president Acelyn Williams is first vice President, Denise Hawkins is past president though she's worn many hats, people. And Bertha Williams Pullen is the life member. Let's talk about your educational and scholarship programs. Sure. Originally, or in the beginning, our club was consisted of a lot of educators, a lot of educators and being an educator, you know, we're always cons always concerned about the youth in the community. So we have had programs, we've had tutoring programs, we've had um mentoring programs of the students. We've done readings in different schools. We, we make sure that our students around us know who we are because we provide for them, our scholarship program. It's amazing because during our founders' day, we've always been able to provide an award monies to deserving students who have applied for the scholarship, any high school student, any high school senior in Monmouth or Ocean County, they have the ability to apply for a scholarship. And I have, I have to say our scholarship, I like money, but we get big money. We give big money and we additionally give book scholarships too. So if they don't get one of our major ones, they still have the opportunity to receive one of our book scholarships. It's a book scholarship. A book scholarship is a smaller amount of money. You know, it could be $800 you know. So think about $800 as a book scholarship or the scholarships are thousands of dollars that we give to students. That is huge and a big help to families and the students do. These students come back to you and tell you thank you. Yes. And what a difference you've made in their lives. Yes, we capture testimonials annually and we do place those testimonials on our website and send them to our members. Students telling us how grateful they are for their scholarships. We do speak to students, they graduate and they tell us what influence we've had on them um over their, their uh journey academically. So that is what gives us the motivation to raise funds, raise money to be able to continue to work. We, we try to give out at least 20 to $30,000 each year. So it's a considerable amount of money that we have to raise. But um through a lot of hard work, we're able to do it every year. We were even fortunate this year to see the um the fruit of our labor, right? We were doing our scholarships this year, we met a couple of students that applied for the scholarship who we met when they were younger at our C grant consortium activity. And they were years ago they met us from that activity and now they're applying for our scholarship. So we even took kids to Yale um last year, a group of students. So, yeah, we, we're seeing the profit of our, our hard work.

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33SPOTLIGHTNJ5_2024-03-03-09-20-37

The Central Jersey Club is celebrating 60 years of helping the community. We have four members present today and we want to talk to you about your leadership. Yes. Yes. So we started our leadership program two years ago under the pandemic, we received funding from First Energy Foundation to start a leadership program in Monmouth and Ocean Counties. Um We use those funds to basically empower our women of the community, provide them with executive coaching, um workshops and seminars designed to encourage our women to expand in their careers, um challenging them professionally, encouraging them to reach the C Suite and all those things that we talk about as, as business and professional women. Um This month in honor of Women's History Month, we are planning our second leadership summit. The summit would be in um March 9th at the Sheridan Eaton Town and the theme of Women's history month. This month, this year is women who advocate for equity diversity and inclusion. So we're gonna focus on that topic. We have amazing panelists, amazing keynote speaker who is also um a former member of the Youth Club, uh Cheryl Wade. So we keep our roots really, really close. She is currently a vice president at Teladoc Health and she's gonna come back and speak on her experiences as a VPN Den. I, that's a full circle, full circle again and part of our legacy. And I just have to mention we spoke about our um founder and our charter members. We have one charter member who is still alive. And that's Miss Katherine Darby who was like the foundation of our club. She's a foundation of our club and we call to her, congratulations to her. Katherine is 9091 years old at this time. And all of us feel very indebted to her for the way she taught us. You know, what we're supposed to do. We also have in the club as a legacy, one of our national presidents, a national president of this club, Piola Smith Smith, and she has also been instrumental in mentoring our young people and mentoring our club members. Why is the mentorship so important to you all because it's rooted in our, our foundation, right? The purpose of this organization was designed to promote and protect the interests of black women, right? And we recognize that we are sometimes our own mentors, right? We we're the first source of comfort that we have particularly in a business and professional space. So for us to serve as guides and leaders to the future business and professional women is extremely important. But for us to also acknowledge those women that are currently mentoring us as we're still navigating that journey is, is, is extremely important. So we, we live it right through the youth programs, but we also um reflect and um lean on the legacy and those women that are still here to help us and guide us through this journey. And again, their leadership summit takes place at the Sheraton Eatontown Hotel in Eatontown at 11 a.m.

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33spotlightnj6_2024-03-03-12-20-15

We have the members of the Central Jersey Club where they say on spotlight New Jersey. Kenisha Jones, Oslin Williams, Denise Hawkins and Bertha Williams Pullen. Ladies. What else would you like people to know about this club and how they can get involved? Well, you can get involved. You can follow us on every aspect of social media. We are on Facebook, we are on Instagram. You can f see some of our events on youtube. If you have not were not able to come to events, you can always go to our youtube and stream those services. Um But follow us, we wanna see you. We want to be at our events. I think the other important factor is our members, right? We, we, we're always looking for members. We rely on the expertise of many professional women in our area. We're currently a large club, but we're always looking for dynamic professional women to join us in our journey. Um uh It's a, it's a lot of work to do scholarships and to wear so many hats and to be in so many different places. So we need a lot of us to do that. So we're always looking for new members and dynamic people to join this organization and you're looking for women of all ages. Go ahead, Bertha. That's exactly what I was gonna say. The fact that we have such a range of age groups in our organization helps us because even with a perfect example, technology, we have club members who had no interest in technology at all, all of our correspondence is through, you know, our, our electronics, you know, but one thing that we did do, we have taught our senior members how to use technology. We're, everybody is not there yet, but we're, we're getting to that point. And then we have the young ladies here who technology to them, like reading a book, you know, they know everything. So it helps that we have the, the age range because we, as senior members, we know how to project what needs to be, what needs to be taught. I love the way generations learn from each other in your club. That's, that's big for us, for us. And we never exclude any, any voice or group in our organization. We listen to stuff. We, we, we deliver programs to our members and pro and community the way that they need it. So if we have a member that prefers to read it in the mail, we sell it in the mail. So we were very mindful of making sure we deliver our programs and our message in the manner in which our community and members desire it again. That requires a lot of infrastructure. A lot of support from our sponsors who sponsors our programs, they sponsor our technology infrastructure. Um Our website, there's a lot of work in, in delivering programs and this type of messaging to such a large community in Monmouth and Ocean County. Um But we, we do a very good job. I think of managing it all. If anyone's interested, they can always go on our website, uh for additional information. Um They can contact the director of membership via the email that's out there. So it's not that we're hiding everything they need to know is right there donation button. Is there everything Facebook? So it was really, really a great set up on the website if they have any questions whatsoever and if they do, they can text email it to us.

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News 12’s Della Crews spoke to officials from the organization to learn more about their mission.

Spotlight New Jersey: Central Jersey Club of NANBPWC, Inc

News 12’s Della Crews spoke to officials from the organization to learn more about their mission.

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