Connections Fall/Winter 2010 (PDF) - Sisters of St. Joseph of ...

Sister Liz Brown, CSJ
Building
bridges
Okolona is an old railroad town
that seems like it had the wind
knocked out of it, struggling with
high unemployment, poor health care,
slumlord-run housing and an education
system so inadequate it has just been
taken over by the state.
Sister Liz Brown, CSJ works to
breathe new life and hope into the town
in her dual role as pastoral administrator
at St. Teresa’s Parish and as founder
and executive director of EXCEL, Inc.,
a community organization focused on
furthering education, promoting community
building and fostering healthy lives.
When she arrived there in 1988,
she found herself in a town that was
less than 1 percent Catholic with the
daunting task of running a parish that
had no priest and three parishioners.
“For many people, I was the first
Catholic that they had ever met…not to
mention the first sister!” she exclaims.
Eager to make connections, she
quickly established regular services on
Saturday nights and spent Sundays
attending community events she’d see
announced in the newspaper. “People
would be shocked because they realized
they didn’t intend to put out an open
invitation, especially across racial lines,”
she recalls. “I’d get a lot of second
glances, but I got to know a lot of
people in the community.”
Today Brown is a community leader
and EXCEL is the town’s hub. What began
as a “seat of the pants” summer youth
program in three borrowed classrooms
is now housed in a 16,500 square-foot
former department store on Main Street.
Children’s enrichment, senior wellness
and GED certification classes are the
core program while a community gym,
computer lab and commons room are
open to all in need.
Brown’s business acumen, or as she
Above, Sister Liz Brown, CSJ shares a hearty laugh with the volunteers at EXCEL’s resale shop.
The shop offers affordable clothes, furniture and other basics while providing the program a steady
income stream. Below, Brown works with a student in EXCEL’s renowned GED program, which
offers classes for teens and adult learners. “We try to help our kids pass in a failing school system,
but if they drop out we pick them up from there,” she says.
“For many people, I was
the first Catholic that
they had ever met...not to
mention the first sister!”
~Sister Liz Brown, CSJ
calls it, “hard work and horse trading,”
has helped EXCEL expand to include
a resale shop and a Catholic Center.
Brown also manages two additional
locations in the region and has additional
projects under way.
And the parish, still small in numbers
but big in faith, is an open and welcoming
community that brings the Gospel to
Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
Although Brown has come a
long way from her early days scouring
the papers in Okolona, her goal has
always remained the same. For her,
it’s not about building programs and
facilities—it’s about building bridges.
When EXCEL was born, Brown
was deliberate in instilling racial,
economic and religious diversity at every
level from board membership to staffing
to programming. “We wanted whatever
we started to cross racial bounds from
the very beginning,” she says. “We
wanted to develop a different structure.”
Brown’s initial innovation continues
to provide countless opportunities for
people to see themselves and each other
in a new light, bringing about change
one relationship at a time.
“It’s just amazing what happens… I
see a wealthy white person and professional
black person out dancing at our
Valentine’s Ball…A GED kid, first in
his family to get any kind of degree,
in our cap and gown ceremony… it’s
worth all the blood, sweat and tears to
get things going just to see that it can
happen. It can break down barriers.”
Co n n e c t i o n s • Fa l l/Wi n t e r 2010
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