The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is proud to announce that Joyce Cook, one of our Books Not Bars Campaign’s Family Organizers, has been named one of KQED’s Women’s History Month Local Heroes
Joyce started at Ella Baker Center as a member of our Families for Books Not Bars Network, tirelessly working to engage parents of incarcerated family members in our statewide campaign to reform the California Youth Authority. Herself having been raised in some of the Bay Area’s most violent neighborhoods, Joyce realized that the youth had to see something different in the community they were growing up in and immediately worked with families in the Richmond to take part in their children’s lives. She has testified in Sacramento to transform the juvenile justice system and conducts outreach at youth prisons around California to connect with and support family members of incarcerated youth.
Outside of her work with the Ella Baker Center, Joyce is a poet and a single parent, and who is guided in her work by the principle that many of our children are merely “Lost souls with stories to be told.” Congratulations Joyce! She will be recognized on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 for KQED’s Women’s History Month celebration and Local Hero awards ceremony.
Want to support Joyce?
Join us March 24, 2010 6-8:30pm @ 2601 Mariposa Street (at Bryant) San Francisco
The event is free and open to the public, please RSVP by Monday, March 22 by emailing rsvpwhm@kqed.com or call 415.553.2382
Click here for more information about KQED Women’s History Month Local Heroes
One Trackback
[...] In honor of Mother’s Day on Sunday, we share this poem from Ella Baker Center’s Joyce Cook, one of our Books Not Bars Family Organizers. Joyce was recently recognized by KQED as a Women’s History Month Local Hero. [...]