Voices for Voices®

Power of a Dream: 16 Years of Sisterhood Against Domestic Violence | Episode 202

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 202

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Power of a Dream: 16 Years of Sisterhood Against Domestic Violence | Episode 202

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Brenda Justice pulls back the curtain on the challenging realities of running a grassroots nonprofit in this candid conversation about Power of a Dream Sisters Helping Sisters Ministries. After 16 years devoted to domestic violence prevention and survivor support, Justice shares both the triumphs and struggles of maintaining a mission-driven organization with limited resources.

What began as a women's ministry has evolved into a multifaceted organization with programs serving anyone affected by domestic violence. The flagship "Cherish" program supports those currently experiencing abuse, trying to escape, or rebuilding their lives post-trauma. Justice has strategically expanded with specialized initiatives like The Women's Forum focusing on self-care and The Everyday Brother program addressing men's experiences with domestic violence—both as potential perpetrators and victims. Their annual domestic violence workshop explores different facets of abuse each year, from elder abuse to child abuse, with next year focusing on abuse against people with disabilities.

Behind these vital community services lies the stark financial reality of small nonprofits. Justice candidly discusses how she and her executive board often reach into their own pockets when donations fall short, a situation familiar to many passionate founders. The organization has only recently begun navigating the complex world of grant applications, a process requiring years of organizational development and meticulous documentation. Even basic operational expenses create significant strain without dedicated office space or staff.

Most revealing is Justice's resourcefulness—creating her own marketing materials, using smartphone photography instead of hiring professionals, and playing Spotify playlists when a DJ isn't in the budget. This DIY approach characterizes how small organizations maximize impact despite minimal resources. As she puts it, "We are small, but we are mighty."

Ready to support organizations making a difference in your community? Consider donating to or volunteering with grassroots nonprofits like Power of a Dream—they're doing essential work with a fraction of the resources of larger charities.

Brenda Justice, founding president of Power of a Dream Sisters Helping Sisters Ministries, shares how her 16-year-old domestic violence prevention organization operates through multiple specialized programs serving women, men, and families dealing with various forms of domestic violence.

If you'd like to support Power of a Dream or volunteer with their programs, they welcome help with fundraising, event planning, and spreading awareness about domestic violence prevention.

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Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us, whether you're listening or whether you're watching this particular episode, we couldn't do this without you. If you're able to subscribe, share like comment, that would be very helpful to us to be able to share the wonderful guests with you and with people in Northeast Ohio, across the United States and across the world, and that is what we aim to do. We're reaching 50 countries, 500 cities already today, and we can do this without you, and we thank you again for having the support of us at this time and again say thank you ten times.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So today we're going to be doing part two of a two-part series. You saw last week our wonderful interview with Brenda Justice, who works with the Akron Symphony Orchestra but, more importantly, is the founding president and chairperson of Power of a Dream Sisters Helping Sisters Ministries, which is a 501c3. And we are going to continue our conversation and move into a couple fun topics. Maybe One's more funner than the other and again, thank you for joining us, brenda.

Brenda Justice:

Thank you again.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, so let's start out talking. Okay, so, Power of a Dream. You have a. How does the programming work? I guess for Power of a dream. You have a. How does the programming work, I guess for power of a dream well, how has it now?

Brenda Justice:

how has it ended up?

Brenda Justice:

yeah, okay, yeah, that's been a process but, um, this is um, we, um, power of a dream sister, helping sisters, ministries, we, we have different groups under our umbrella, okay, and those groups address different areas of domestic violence and how we deal with them. Okay, our first one, which we've had from the very beginning, is called Cherish Cherish, the woman that God has made you. And I just want to say also, also, although we are started out as a women's group, we do not um, we do not um, well, we always accept everyone, regardless, regardless. So, men, you're also invited as well, because you never know, those topics might be for you as well. So I just wanted to say that, because sometimes people think it's only for women and uh, no, domestic violence is domestic violence and addresses everyone. But um, cherish cherish, woman that god has made you, um, and that is for persons that have gone through domestic, right there in the middle of domestic violence, trying to get out, trying to find self, or they are have already gotten out. Now, where do I go next? And and also addressing the different things that led up to them going through domestic violence, because a lot of times we're not aware of what led to domestic violence and and how to get out of it and how to proceed forward. And then we have another group called the Women's Forum, taking Care of Thy Wonderful Self. Our chairperson is Nadine Minister, nadine Bates, and it's all about self-care, women and persons having self-care. We do it three times a year and we've had different people come in on the psychological part of it, as far as taking care of your health. There's different things that we have addressed in that area. We also have the Everyday Brother. Now we just finished our second year with the Everyday Brother.

Brenda Justice:

I thought that you know it's for those men who are abusers or former abusers or been abused, because when you address the men, you know, oh, I know they're bad, I just know they've been the abused ones, I mean the ones that have been abusers, and it's not always that way. It goes both ways and people need to be open-minded about that. You know, don't just look one way. I thought that it was. I like the everyday brother. I don't need lawyers, I don't need people that have big names, I don't need that. We need the everyday brother, the one that we see walking down the street, the one that has a story to tell and and maybe this is a way for them to let other brothers know how things work, so I thought that I could proceed on.

Brenda Justice:

Then I found there's more to it than for men. I am a woman so it's a little bit more difficult. So I have a male. Our male facilitator is Demond Secession and he's also my advisor for that group. And so we've taught, we've addressed, we did self-care for men. This year we also addressed the end of the year with sexual domestic violence. You know we had a gentleman that did that from Kent State. He was an advisor for that and we addressed a lot of things. We also did the mental. We touched base with the mental with Robert Hunt in the beginning of the year with NAMI.

Brenda Justice:

He's the president of NAMI. So we addressed a lot of things. We even did some scenes so people could see how to react back and forth. And then we do so many things. It's such a crazy year for us. But we also have in October we have our domestic violence workshop. We do it every year. We've been in existence 16 years.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's what I knew was over 10, so that's 16.

Brenda Justice:

And so every domestic violence we do our domestic violence workshop. But it's not just domestic violence in general, it's domestic violence in different areas. This year we did child abuse, One year we did elder abuse. Next year we're doing handicap abuse. You know, sometimes we do physical abuse, sometimes it's all different types of facets of this and I think people just narrow it down. But in addition to that, we have people come like from different areas. We have someone from CASA come from the juvenile courts. We have someone from the prosecutors come. You know, prosecutor Elliott came one year before he became the prosecutor. We have different areas and different that we address, but we always end with testimonials and also we have a brother, george Head, that does our self-defense.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Okay.

Brenda Justice:

And self-defense is applied to, whatever the topic was, is how do hand like this year coming up handicap how do you handicap people stay? I used to help defense people never addressed those things. We think outside of the box. That's what we do, because I it's nice that we can talk about it. We can talk, well, you can talk to your blue, but what you're going to do about it you know, and those, and I mean we also had one.

Brenda Justice:

We were just one year with the blind. People don't realize what the blind is going through. And some people one lady, I mean one lady was blind because of domestic violence. You know, we've had all this. And I had another lady that uh um, because you know, when we did a general one of just the physical part of it, we had the one lady she had her husband throw an acid in her face and she's had over 60 some surgeries, you know, and now she is an advocate, of course, but you know those kind of things, people need to tell their story. And I had one lady come to our meeting that her boyfriend had hit her so hard in her chest it broke her chest bone, but she didn't leave him, you know, because of fear. Fear is the main thing for domestic violence.

Brenda Justice:

And then, of course, you know, as you know, with all these things going on, we try to do fundraisers. Fundraisers are probably the worst part of this for me, because it takes a lot of effort. We always start off with a fish fry at my house, so we did the fish fry, which started to be more of a community thing for us now, and then we just do different things, raffles and different things of that sort, and of course the big one is the six, our Six-annual black tie affair that we have, and we always do it at the Akron Women's City Club. You know, so we. But it's just so hard, you know it's hard to get people involved, and and there's also so many organizations that I found out this year Everybody's having a gala, everybody's doing some kind of fundraiser, and it's all around the same month by the time December comes. Oh, I'm sorry, or they have a preference. People don't realize that power of a dream.

Brenda Justice:

Although we are a small organization, we're, we're mighty yeah at the same time, we still help others and I think, um, I think they, in a way, sometimes people judge you. They don't understand how hard it is just to get to where we're at. It takes a lot of work and a lot of perseverance. You have to be ready to persevere, and so I've been trying my best, and I have an exec board as well. Do you mind if I say who they are, because they've been so loyal to me?

Justin Alan Hayes:

no please.

Brenda Justice:

You know everybody doesn't always agree, but we come to an agreement and that's what I always say, because I have to be very open to hear what other people have to say. You know, although I might not always agree, but sometimes I'm not always correct. And so my vice president, who's been with Power Dream for 16 years, is Minister Nadine Bates. We also have my sister, carla Portis. She's also our corresponding secretary and our outreach person as well. She loves people and you can always count on her. She's very loyal and she's also the co-chair for the Cherish group, okay, you know. And, by the way, cherish meets every first Saturday of the month. We take a break. We're going to be from March through December. Okay, because it's a lot of work.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, it is.

Brenda Justice:

And at this point we have programming, basically. And then we have Nancy Jacobs she's also a co-chairperson and Artelia Mayfield, she's our member-at-large, and Anita Young is our member at large as well. So if I forgot someone, please forgive me, but we do. And then we have our advisory board. We have Ophelia Averitt, we have David Sika, we have Robert Hunt and we have Martha Dr Martha Banks. So those are my, that's my support team, you know the head ones. And then, of course, we're always taking members, as you know, as much as we can, and we also ask for those who are ready to volunteer, please be willing to do that for us. So you know. So that's what we basically. Basically, that's what we're doing.

Brenda Justice:

You know, we're just busy.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And to really take what you said, talking about fundraising events, there's so many organizations and they're doing such great work and we try not to be competitive like in the corporate world, where we're like oh, here's our competitors. But what we're finding and I'm sure you are as well we all have competitors, even if we don't know it, if it's not verbalized, that for every dollar that an individual has, if they've been donating to an organization for 10 years, well, come year 11, they're going to donate to that same one. Right, and that's something that I've had to work on. Just internalizing. That's something that I've had to work on. Just internalizing, not comparing our organization to an organization that's been around for 50, 60, 100 years, like Yip Nami, and to really start to try to grasp how to reach individuals where they're at, knowing that Akron Children's Hospital and certain ones are just like St Jude's and Shriners.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Everybody's doing incredible work and it's much needed. But the fundraising part is probably the toughest I would agree part is probably the the toughest. I I would agree, and you and I and anybody who's leading an organization is the point person. Many times, if not always, we don't get paid like. We don't like if you donate a hundred dollars or twenty dollars out of times it's not like we're just putting that in our pocket no, no, not at all it's going into programming, it's going into what can we do?

Justin Alan Hayes:

you know next year? Right, you know we were coming up short this year and and so I think, just making making sure an organization is a 501c3, while individuals are looking at organizations, that should be like the first thing that there's, uh, but I mean there's, there's a lot of great foundations that are out there, but they might not be a 501c3 and it may be a family foundation which we right, I gotta watch you know speaking about certain right, right certain terms and certain things and foundations is is one of those, but there are.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That being said, there are organizations whatever you want to call them that they're in existence for the family oh yeah, and so that family is like oh well, we do this one thing a year but uh, and you know, we've found a lot. There's just so many foundations and they're getting. It just seems to be a popular thing for individuals whether they're an athlete or entertainer.

Justin Alan Hayes:

It's like, well, we got this foundation and then the money goes there, and then they have, you know, family members on the board and then they start divvying up the money that way, as far as like a tax, so they don't get taxed on the money. So for the individual or individuals out there, the organizations that are looking for you know, sponsorship opportunity.

Brenda Justice:

Oh my gosh.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You know, power of a dream, voice for voices. You can't go wrong with that and I know you've had supporters. Like I said, you wouldn't have been able to be in existence for 16 years if there weren't supporters, and the number one supporter it's you and I.

Brenda Justice:

Right, Exactly, Totally. And you know. You know we do this programming because I and you believe, we both believe so much in what we do, and I don't know about you, but when it comes to financial support of what we do, if we don't have it, it comes out of our pocket. Exactly, and I wasn't going to address this, but you know what. I think that it needs to be addressed because we just started actually at least me feeling that we are qualified for what is expected of us, to apply for a grant. And people say, oh, they could have done this. Oh, why didn't they do this? Well, we're not ready. You have to be ready and you have to have things in place. I'm not going to just you got to be responsible for that money and make sure it does what it's supposed to do, and so and so we did get one grant last year. We got one grant last year, and then I started to apply. This time I said, well, we're set up to the point now, but it's sort of like a programming.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Brenda Justice:

You know we have speakers that come in for all of our groups. Sometimes it's just people that have, sometimes it's the testimonial part, but whatever it is, we're helping and we're trying to get to that awareness of domestic violence. But this year we started doing the grants and because now we're doing the grants, you know your pockets get a little weak when you keep doing this. Right, you know what I mean.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You talk about inflation and then the politic being an election year, a national election, where some individuals maybe that's where maybe some of that money went and I read some research that election years are like one of the hardest years to be able to obtain, because it doesn't.

Brenda Justice:

It doesn't, yeah, it's gone.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I mean it doesn't make me feel any better about this situation because to your point. We're reaching into our, our own pocket and I it and I I've I've stated it publicly many times about our organization I've put and it's not the gloat or anything, but I've put over $100,000 of my own money over the course of it. Bless your heart. And if I didn't have that, I wouldn't be able to go. You can't do anything. You can't do anything.

Brenda Justice:

You can't even accomplish your goal.

Justin Alan Hayes:

No.

Brenda Justice:

And, in addition to that, it's hard to get sponsorships because, you know, I personally I think they're looking at the, the big organ, you know corporations, organizations or whatever it may be and when you're the low person down here, it's like what do you do, different than what they do? But everybody can't. Everybody can't help everybody, that's right. One organization can't help everybody. You got to spread it a little bit so that they can, because sometimes it gets too big, you lose the little ones, you know, and they and they might go back. You don't want that to happen.

Brenda Justice:

So they have to understand that we are just as important, you know, and and I and I truly believe that god didn so they had to understand that we were just as important, you know, and I truly believe that God didn't put this in my mind and feed this all to me, because he fed it to me, you know. Yeah, it started off with just power, and I was listening to Whitley Phipps and I was sitting in my chair and I was like, and then the dream power of a dream came up, you know, and then it was a building process for me.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Brenda Justice:

You know, and it's not something that I just said, oh, I'm just going to do it. It's scary to do this.

Justin Alan Hayes:

It is, you know.

Brenda Justice:

It's very scary and it's like is anybody really going to come to my meetings today? Or you know what are you going to do, but you know what are you going to do. You know, but you know what I we do to. Also, I want to add this and we have our meeting, so sometimes we notice that it is a little bit low in numbers.

Brenda Justice:

But now I facebook live because I found that some people come on, some people are ashamed right you know what I'm saying, and they're ashamed and they don't want everybody to know their business and they might, you know, be known or whatever it may be, but they can still listen to us and it's recorded and I put it on YouTube and I'm pretty sure that you've been in a position where you probably had to teach yourself a lot of things because we can't afford to get a professional videographer or photographer or whatever it may be.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, for all the programming.

Brenda Justice:

Yes, but thank God for Google, so I've learned a whole lot of things. You know, I do my own grants and you know, and we have somebody on our board that reviews them for me, so, but that takes a lot of time.

Justin Alan Hayes:

It does. Oh, oh my gosh.

Brenda Justice:

You have to break that. Oh, it's just, it's just something. And you just said is this correct? You go over, you go over, you go over and it's like, hmm, okay, you know, you just have to be so correct. And then you never know when you get some of these grants. Sometimes you have to take care of the money beforehand, Right, you know people don't look at that.

Justin Alan Hayes:

No.

Brenda Justice:

And I'm like that means I better have my savings together, because otherwise know we can't help accomplish this. So it's so many fences of. Isn't it something amazing how things happen. Even my, I think my team doesn't even realize how much it takes to do these things. You know because somebody said well, why don't you just ask, tell us about that, you need to do this. A operational cost, cost, just operational cost every month, although we don't have a, a location, a don't have a location for what we do. We do a lot of things from the library or from the community center, but that takes money too. It takes ink, paper, all these things, stamps, everything.

Justin Alan Hayes:

It takes a lot of time and people look at the one thing like, oh, everything, it takes a lot of time. And people look at the one thing like, oh, it's just a stamp or five stamps, but it's the accumulation of stamps plus ink plus paper, plus rental fee, and it's like and that's just a small thing.

Brenda Justice:

Then you look at it and you're like, oh wow, because, just like when we did our black tie, I had to think about some things. I wanted to have a photographer again, but I said, ladies, you will take your self, your, your cell phones out and you will take pictures. Yeah, because we cannot.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I mean, you know I can it's just, as I mean as far as quality wise, it very.

Brenda Justice:

I mean, that's what we do a lot, and google has it so that you can fix them up and everything. So I'm like I'll deal with that, and then we couldn't have a DJ this year. But plan B A friend of mine brought her, you know, had a list of Spotify.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Brenda Justice:

And we had you know we did our. I do believe in having live entertainment though at some point. So my friend and he's also my company, that's um kenny mccorvey. He did a lot of like piano music to set the mood right you know. So we still had a wonderful evening. It might and we could, you have to cut where you can cut and um, but mainly it was like it was very hard, you know, and the program booklets, that's another story, isn't it?

Justin Alan Hayes:

yeah, I, I mean even just brochure, I mean exactly anything like well, just paper and ink, oh yeah, but how you can't just like the brochures one, no, like I want to this print so many is for this, and then we'll come back and visit again.

Brenda Justice:

You know that's what I do, like that one there and then. But I do my own brochures, you know, and I did my own program booklet.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Because you have to learn you can't depend on people to do things for you, because nobody has that, that passion and feeling that you have exactly and it comes back to nobody is gonna be as bought into the organization, the mission, the programming, as you and I and I found that too where it's like, wow, there's people in there that want to be involved, but I'm afraid they might take an idea here or there.

Brenda Justice:

Not while I'm. You know that's so true, and I hate that.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I don't like to kind of verbalize it, but then it's like well, who else is going to do it then? And then that's just extra work on myself.

Brenda Justice:

Hello.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And it's, it's, it's a lot, and I think that for individuals, just watching and listening any organization takes a lot of time and attention. But you look at these, you know larger organizations. They have staffs of like a hundred and they have volunteers that have been volunteering for years and years and they have, you know maybe, different locations. You know different locations, different cities. They've grown to be able to do that, but you have to have people to do that, because you're just one individual.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Right, right, it's like why can't be in Chicago and Miami or New. York City. I gotta be here, and how am I gonna find out if they're doing what they're supposed?

Brenda Justice:

to do and give them a budget. It's very serious here. Yeah, this is serious, you can tell, because they have to remember too. We have a job in addition to all this. Right to be able to do it. Yes, and so you know, you have family, so we have a lot of things going on in our own lives that we make time for what we feel that you know has been put on our heart.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You know, and I'm just going to mention this to you, Nobody's listening or watching, just you know people all over the world.

Brenda Justice:

But you know we were talking earlier before we came on and you know we were talking talking earlier before we came on, and you know we're talking, I, you know, I know many times, sometimes people don't want to come to meetings because they don't want to hear what has to be said. And and I was telling you about my, one of the one of our facilitators was speaking for our black tie and it was on, you know, it was on a testimonial that he was inspired to speak about because of our guest speaker, which was Teresa Stafford from Hope and Healing, and, um, I was so amazed and I'm still amazed, I just want to bring it up again I'm still amazed of how people can judge and how people, um, are afraid to hear what might be in their own homes. I just think that, as I don't think we should judge anybody, I don't think we should put ourself on a platform and think that we're better than anybody else, because we're not. Everybody has done something, everybody is doing something, and that's what I'll say there. And but you know, and nobody's perfect, you know, give people a break you don't know what they're going through and try to empathize with that person, because it's not fair. And when they address some situations at the black tie.

Brenda Justice:

You know, I had someone call me about it and they say, well, they're representing you, brenda, you know. And I said, and to myself, and so are you. So it puts me, it gives me another mindset because you have to accept people for who they are. And then I had another call the other day and you know, everything might have been fine but you know, maybe they shouldn't been talking about what they were talking about. It was okay for the speaker to talk about, well, the Well, the speaker's talked about it, so they can talk about it too. And why should I shut anybody up when somebody needed to hear that and somebody needed to be released from that? So I just feel that when you have a guest speaker, I let them be who they are and I don don't judge you because I don't want you to judge me right well, we're getting super close, so, and so I just wanted to thank you again for part one, part two, we'll have you back and, uh, potential podcasting collaboration with the organizations.

Brenda Justice:

Yes, yes, some fun fun things, yes, so thanks.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Fun things, yes, so thanks for joining us, thank you. Thank you for joining us, our watchers, our viewers, our listeners, until next time. I am Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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