Uplift: Overseeing Athletic, Academic and Artistic after school programs for 1,400 children and teens per day.

Published Jan 24, 2025, 8:30 AM

Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Dr. Christina Dukes Brown.

The Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic, Chief Executive Officer.  As a leader with a vision for prioritizing collaboration and inclusivity in all her endeavors, Dr. Brown has dedicated her career to nurturing growth and fostering community well-being. Her extensive experience in educational leadership spans over two decades, marked by ascending roles and broadening responsibilities across several prestigious institutions. Under her outcome-focused and thoughtful direction, organizations have flourished, consistently achieving enhanced educational outcomes and broader community impact. Her accomplished background fully prepares her to lead the Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic into its next chapter and to advance its mission of inspiring and enabling all young people to reach their full potential.

Company Description *
The Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic currently serves more than 1,400 children and teens per day in both Paterson and Passaic through academic, athletic, and artistic programming both after school and during summer camp. The Club is grounded in our students' academic and interpersonal success, ages 5-18. Every day, at two Clubhouses and eleven satellite locations, every child completes their homework before accessing enrichment programs that range from STEM to Nutrition to Aquatics, creating a broad spectrum of learning opportunities. In addition, each day, a nutritious snack and meal are served to our Club Kids to ensure that they receive the “fuel” to keep them striving and thriving.

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Hi, I'm Rashan mcdonnk, a host of weekly Money Making Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show provides offer everyone it's time to stop reading other people's success stories and start living your own. If you want to be a guest on my show, please visit our website, Moneymakingconversations dot com and click the be a guest buddon. My guest is the chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Club of Pattison and Parsak, New Jersey. They currently serve more than fourteen hundred children and teens per day in both Patterson and Parsic through academic, athletic and artistic programs both after school and during summer camp. She understands the critical role she plays in supporting youth on their journeys through great futures. Please welcome to the Money Making Conversation Masterclass, Doctor Christina Dukes Brown. How are you doing, Doctor Brown.

I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.

Okay, cool.

I'm familiar with the New York area, New Jersey era was up there with Steve Harvey doing w b LS one those seven point five for many years, So tell us about the new Jersey community that you're supporting.

Sure, So New Jersey is my home. I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, and so the towns that I currently support, Patterson and Passaic are very similar to the town that I grew up in. New Jersey is filled with a whole lot of different types of people. But more than likely the towns where I'm serving, we are working more with LATINX and Black communities. What we found is that many of these families are struggling and finding the resources that they need to just live. There's a high homelessness population, there's there's a there's so many food deserts that are around us, and our club is really working to support those families who have those types of needs. Many of those children who are going to school a struggling. The numbers in Patterson are about twenty percent are literate and about another fifteen percent are performing out or above proficiency in math, and the results are pretty much the same and Pasake, and so the club works really hard to partner with schools to provide after school support to children to make sure that they're getting essential resources for homework completion and tutoring. Our club is open you know Monday through Saturday to support families. For that purpose, we also have a lot of partners who assist us with providing nutritious food to our club members and to make sure that we are a space where children can come and have like a really good time. So they're being fed here, they're getting support academically here, and they're having fun while they do it. And we're really proud of that and how we support this the communities that we serve.

First of all, that was a great open speech own You get a big check mark there for me because you laid it out for me. Because I just need to understand that when people in your position, you know, you see the struggle every day. I've always wondered, how do you how do you get up out of bed or even go to sleep knowing that that struggle may look the same the next day. And you represent a very accomplished organization like the Boys and Girls Club of Patterson and PARSEIC.

So I am very motivated to support my community. It's important that I am a part of the system that creates a better world for my children and my children's children. And I can't complain about the position of black and brown people in society if I'm not going to do the work necessary to support its elevation. And so it's hard to you know, get to sleep at night, for sure, because you're constantly thinking about what's next and what you must do. But I am motivated to jump out of bed every morning to come and support these communities. I know that it takes a real village. Like I said, I grew up in Jersey City. This was in the eighties, and you can imagine what Jersey City was and what it became during the crack, you know era, And so I understand that being this resource to these particular families is essential to their survival. And I do need to be a part of solving the problem and not complaining about it.

Well, here's the beauty of this conversation.

You reside on the East Coast was just densely populated with African American and people of color, you know. So, I'm sure the Boys and Girls Club except volunteers.

Correct, that is correct.

Okay, we love volunteers.

Okay, doctor Brown.

Let's let's first of all put out a contact number for volunteers. To get that number, start writing that down. This is going This is a call the Action Interview.

Yeah, I love it.

And this interview is about trying to support young people. And it's not about the administration that's in now, it's not about the administration that's left. It's about our community. My community got me where I am today. You know, I didn't get into extra dollars from the government or anything. My community supported me. It was the village. And I'm calling them the village to support what you're trying to do in those two communities. So what's that contact number? Let's get that out the way first.

Sure, So the phone number here at the club is nine seven three two seven nine three zero five five, and you can come to our website at www dot BGCPPNJ dot org.

Now, if they come to that websode toll call you, what do you want them to call you about?

So there are a couple of initiatives that we are in the process of delivering to our club members. The first, which we're super excited about, is a program called Girls with Goals. And essentially, what we found out was that many of our teenage female club members felt like they wanted to go to college and better themselves and all of that, but mostly they wanted to start their own businesses, and so we responded to their need and their requests by creating this amazing ten week program where we have business owners, women of color who are business owners coming in and mentoring and sharing their experiences with the young ladies and making sure that they understand that there's ebbs and flows to owning your own business and helping them to figure out how to create a business proposal and how to pitch it to the appropriate people to get the funding that they need. And so that's one of the things that we're really excited about. In this weekend, which is the twenty fifth of January, we're hosting our Empowerment tee where the young ladies who've been a part of the program, along with many of the mentors and their business coach, will come together to sort of celebrate the work that they've been doing throughout this time and to prepare them for their perfect pitch, which is the following weekend, where the girls will share their business proposals with a team of sharks, so to speak, and essentially decide who sort of wins the grand prize, who's in second and third place, and a part of you know, the work that we did with with this Girls with Goals program will ultimately be used as a catalyst to doing this not just with our clubhouses, but clubhouses all across America. So we're excited about that because.

This is just a coast to coast organization, the Boys and Girls.

Club, correct, yeah, yeah, military basis all of that.

Yeah, So let's give us an education about it, you know, the Boys and Girls Club, because there are a lot of organizations that do similar functions, but we're talking about your organization. Give us more pacifics and how you impact in and what age group and also gender.

Sure, So we obviously start as the boys Club, but over the years figured out that the young ladies needed the same outlets for support as young men, and so obviously expanded to accept girls into the clubhouse. And a lot of the work that we do is about building character in young people, building you know, efficacious spirits and young people, providing them, like I said, with the academic supports that they need, and then giving them creative outlets. So we offer dance and you know, we have a musicle that where will be performing next spring, and then you know, our sports programs and our swim program. I just have to tell you that our aquatics program is out of this world. I was at a swim meeat on Saturday, and these kids are fish in water like there.

Was no competitioneotype destroying, the stereotype.

Absolutely completely des obliterated. They are amazing swimmers and our aquatics director is amazing at what he does and what we are. You know, most excited about our brand is that you know we are it's important that children learn how to swim. Anything can happen at any point in time, and sometimes, you know, programs like ours forget that basic skills must be taught to and so the work that we're doing in our aquatics program is is bar It's like tip top tier. They're they're absolutely amazing. So, yeah, we want to make sure that we're doing to support.

Doctor Brown because you're dealing with a lot of stereotypes. You know, people see black youth on television with music and clothes, and you know, music stereotypes our youth. What are the some of the biggest stereotypes that you have to change.

In order for these kids to win moving forward.

That's a great question. I think the stereotypes are that So there's a concept called deficit ideology and Essentially, what it means is that if you are poor, lower class, if you are you know, minority, then you do not have the capacity to even be successful inside of like a professional setting. And I think that is the greatest challenge that we're up Against's helping our kids understand that no matter where you come from, and no matter what you look like, no matter what skin you show up and you have the capacity to become great. And I think too, that we have to figure out ways to affirm our young people who come to us with their own brand of skills that we don't often talk about. So we want them to be great mathematicians and scientists and all of that, but there are some children who come to us who are amazing at just having the soft skills that are necessary to connect with people. Some people come to us and you know, they have the ability to articulate a point in a way that other people can understand. And I think we have to help affirm those skills just like the others, so that young people can be confident in who they are and again continue to build the effication spirit that we all need to be successful.

Cool, I'm talking to doctor Brown. Okay, you know she's the CEO of.

The Boys and Girls Club of Patterson and parsek New Jersey. And we're making it happen because now.

We talked about community calling you.

Now we're going to talk about these corporations offering an internship program. So this called the action right now East Coast. East Coast is part of the call. So give out that number right now again, doctor Brown. Now we call them the corporations to call you and go to your website to help these youths.

But tell them the age of these youths right now.

Yeah, we are working with children from ages five to twenty five.

There you go. Give it this. Give up their phone number and their website right now. We will continue after give it out absolutely.

Phone number is nine seven three two seven nine three zero five five and our website is www dot BGCPPNJ dot org.

Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversations Masterclass continues online at Moneymakingconversations dot com and follow Money Making Conversations Masterclass on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You know We talked about it a little bit, doctor Brown, of this role.

You know, I come from a inner city, six sisters, two brothers. Father was a truck driver, third grade education. Mom graduated from high school, did not go to college, and we lived in the community. When I walked out the door, everybody looked like me, so I felt comfortable. Moved to another community was an upgrade. We got one more extra bedroom, so we're from one bedroom to do bedroom. Okay, but I walked out that door they still looked like me, so there was no challenge for change. Now I'm a person, I'm successful. Do you bring people like me in to talk to the students? And what role can people like me play in what you're trying to do for these students? And Patterson and pass sak new jersey for the Boys and Girls Club.

Yes, we need people like you to come in and mentor some of our young people. We run programming, like I said, like Girls with Goals, were you know about to institute a program called Real Talk for young men, And we need people like you to come in and share your experiences and share your story. I think one of the best motivating factors for most young people is being able to look into the eyes of a person who looks like them, who have a similar background and make up as them, and then for them to learn that, yeah, I made it, even though I showed up in this package and be able to share the stories I'm like the one you just shared about, you know, growing up with you know, not all the things that you might want, but having the things that you need and using those things to drive your success. Showing them the game plan to how they can sort of escape some generational poverty and things like that. That's that's exactly what we want. We want people who will come in and provide that type of support to our young people.

Okay, y'all hear that. You hear the community. You hear the community. She needs you. You hear corporations or small companies, entrepreneurs, she needs you. We're trying to change these kids. We're trying to buckle up within the community, buckle up with the surrounding area. We're not trying to go to the government on this call, because the government did not change Rashwan McDonald life. People in the community change Rashan McDonald's life. That's why we're doing this interview. Because I asked her earlier. Why did she come on the show. She's rushan, I just want to get the word out. Yes, you're talking to the right person here now.

Thank you.

Yes, you currently serve more than fourteen hundred children and teens per day.

It is a huge number. Ye talk about that, talk about the program. We got to break this down.

Now, you're not just doing fifteen people a day, fourteen hundred yep.

So we have a clubhouse here in Patterson, we have another clubhouse and Passaic, and we have eleven other alternate sites. So we'll partner with schools so that the children are just coming out of school and coming directly into our programming in the afternoons, so we start with Power Hour, which is homework help and support. The children go into some of the activities that we do that are connected to the Boys and Girls Club curriculum, and then there's always something fun. They're always creating something, learning a new skill, playing a game, or doing something that has some joy. We'll say that. So that's one of the ways that we're serving so many every day. On the weekends, we're you know, open for Saturday tutoring, so we're open from nine until three, providing the supports that some of our struggling learners need, and then using our resources to support our teenagers who might need an extra push as they're preparing to go to the next grade or go off to college or whatever they're choosing to do after that. So we are running these types of programs six days a week, and I am at this point interested in opening them seven days a week.

So Sunday, Okay, I'm a pray for you. I'm gonna pray for you. You said, Sunday, I'm will pray for you.

Yes, Sunday is you know, we want to make ourselves available to the community as often as the community has a need, and the needs here are high, and we want to make sure that we're responsive to to that.

You know, when you're talking like marginalized groups, you know that we look at TV the have and the have nots, and then they tend to want to show the halves more than the half nots because they don't want to Nobody wants to watch that on TV. You know, they don't get good ratings. But it's the have nots that don't need us that need access. Your role when you we talked about a little bit give us a little bit more about your background and how did you come in into this position of being the CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Patterson and part Sakh, New Jersey.

Yes, so my first interaction with the Boys and Girls Club was in high school. I played basketball. Oh yeah, my crazy.

I can't go the whether, but you and Steven A.

Smith, who I represent, I can I talk basketball with either of you guys, But I would connect y'all because you're up in New Jersey as well.

Okay, I would love that. I would love that. So yeah, I would go there and play with friends and you know, sort of sharpened my skills. And then there were parties and things for kids to do that our parents thought were safe, and so they allowed us to attend. And that's sort of like where I really began to understand the necessity and the importance of the club. But after graduating high school, I went to college down in Virginia, the Great Virginia State University, and learned that I really wanted to be a teacher. And so when I graduated, I started teaching, and from there went into the principalship and then from there went into you know, executive levels of education. Oversight and working mostly in charter schools. But what I learned from my educational background is that schools operating on their own will never provide all the things that children need, and so our clubhouses and our alternate sites are super necessity. They're super necessary in order for children to get the supports that they need. It's hard for a teacher with thirty kids in a classroom to be individualized in their approach. However, when they come to the clubhouse after school, we're one to fifteen, there's another person in there and they're providing supports, and it's necessary. Some of our kids would not know how brilliant they are if those supports were not there for them.

So what is really important that you say that now?

Because we have different support Now I'll be remissed because you said twenty five.

Now, yeah, I wasn't. Okay, that ain't a boar or a girl no more? Okay the bars of the girls club. And it begins because she said twenty five.

So, not to confuse my audience, tell us about that up to twenty five?

What does that mean?

Right? So, the Boys and Girls Club of America has an initiative in place where they're trying to essentially provide the supports that young people between eighteen and twenty four that those folks need. Sometimes college is not in the cards for some people, and we want to be able to help those young people figure out where their strengths and their gifts lie and be able to be and give them the skills and the power really that they need to be additive to society. And so there is a complete focus at the clubs across the country to make sure that those folks who haven't quite figured out what it is that they want to do and what exactly their gifts are, that we're there to support them in figuring that out.

Okay, but helping out there because I'd like what you said, But how are you helping them? But is it online tutoring? Is it that do you have courses like you know? Because I know that we're in a society now that nobody's really jockeying for four year degrees like they used to certificate degrees. A lot of people want to go and junior college is around or two year community college, there's an accelerate place as well as online education is huge positioning and can they see.

This online at your website.

So what we're doing is we're allowing for those young people to come and serve in different roles here so that they gain the professional skills that they need to go out and pursue whatever is next for them. So there's internship opportunities here, there's actual you know, some of our you know, eighteen to twenty four are providing supports to the younger children in the clubhouses and in our alternate sites. And now what we're thinking to move this work forward is how can we partner with local organizations and other you know, clubs like ours to create a space where kids can learn, let's say, you know, some of the blue collar skills that are you know, necessary for society to function. So whether that's automotive, whether that's cosmatology or that type of stuff. We want to make sure that they are not only learning how to be a professional, show up on time, be dress appropriately, have the right types of conversations, and then that they have a skill that they can go back and use so that they can you know, provide for themselves and their families.

Well, you know, another shout out you said was a shout out number three local businesses, local organizations like yours.

I'll hear that. Give it out that number one more time and the.

Number is nine seven three two seven nine three zero five five.

That's what organizations that are similar to what they're doing and you want to co participate.

Absolutely website www dot bgc pp NJ dot org.

Great, as we close out this interview, doctor Brown, thank you for coming on my show allowing me to be.

Your bull horn.

Thank you the exposure because this is the many steps. I'm one of one leg you know, I always tell people, you know what the good quality marketing is that people constantly see your brand, People constantly hear your your claim to success or your needs or your call to action, and you're called an action to call to action today for the community to come for you. Call to action today is for corporations and small business and entrepreneurs to come to you. To call to action today is other organizations and churches that do similar programs to you what you're doing to come to you. But in the end, what are you really trying to accomplish?

In this interview?

And tell everybody what you need so we can get them fired up? Yes, Patterson and past sake, New Jersey.

Yes, So I need men and women who are business owners who can teach our young people the skills that they need to learn in order to become business owners themselves. I need men and women to come and support us as we are mentoring young people and making good choices and helping them to understand that every choice that they make there is an impact. It's going to be positive or negative. To make the right one. We want people to and donate to our causes and be able to contribute to the programming that we run here at the club. About half of our budget for the year comes through donations and so we essentially have to earn four million dollars a year through fundraising, and so we would love for you to share that message. We have a gala coming up called the Great Futures Gala, and we would love for you, know your audience.

And what's that day just coming up? What's that date?

Yes it is May second, but yes, we would love for you guys to be here. I'm happy to share information with you so that you can get information out to your listeners and your viewers, because we definitely are using this as one of the tools to raise the crucial funding that we need. So I'm super excited about just being here and talking to you, just because it gives just one more opportunity for folks to get to know our club and the good work that we're doing here.

Well, my friend, we've done our job okay, And I want to thank you for taking the time to come on my show to talk about the Boys and Girls Club and more important to talk about you. You know that cold jump shot, that cold jump shot that you said you still got some skills tied to.

I definitely still have skill.

I love the confidence.

Again, thank you for coming on Money Making Conversations Masterclass show.

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure meeting you.

I appreciate you.

This has been another edition of Money Making Conversation Masterclass hosted by me Rashaun McDonald. Thank you to our guests on the show today, and thank you listening to the audience now. If you want to listen to any episode I want to be a guest on the show, visit Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money Making Conversation. Join us next week and remember to always leave with your gifts.

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