Staff Members at Shaw Community Center Fight to Preserve Familial Atmosphere

For more than 30 years, generations of Shaw residents looked to the Shaw Community Center as a place of refuge, enrichment, and, for many, steady employment and professional development. 

The pandemic further positioned the Northwest-based center as the hub for young people seeking free meals and mentoring. However, all of that may soon come to an end as Shaw Community Center staff members and board members are in a battle for the community center’s future.   

Shaw Community Center staff members, many of whom hail from the surrounding community and started as client families and later volunteers, are demanding the immediate resignation of the center’s board of directors. 

Staff members, like Melissa Laws, told The Informer that, despite the development of a strategic vision that promotes Black-led organizational changes, the board continues to have Serena Wiltshire, a relic of the former all-white board of directors, as the board chair. 

Laws cites, among other slights, board members’ failure to visit the center, directly participate in fundraising activities, and establish rapport with staff members and community members. 

In early November, Shaw Community Center staff, community members, and contractors sent the board of directors a letter demanding its resignation. Laws signed the letter along with program coordinators Gwendolyn Howard, Gregory Windley, and Marquetta Washington, media program coordinator Gabriel Parker, and program assistants Sharita Howard, Michelle Young, Selena Laws, Delonta Howard, and Ronte Hinton. 

They circulated the letter after the board implemented policy changes that staff members said disregard longstanding cultural norms of benefit to the community center, including: collaboration with staff members with entrepreneurial ventures, paying out of pocket for essentials and disbursing funds to student contractors via CashApp and other direct transfers. 

Per the Nov. 4 letter, staff members recommend that three board members — Pete Davis, Kiah Lewis, and Dan Davis — stay on to facilitate the transition to an entirely new board. 

“One of the things we support within our mission is hiring within the community and expanding the community [presence] so families won’t be gentrified out here,” said Laws, a program director at Shaw Community Center. “Some board members are coming up on their third year [without] coming into the community center or having any parts of the programming. We have reservations about future decision making that impacts what we do around the community center.” 

Discussions That Haven’t Gone Anywhere 

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the Shaw Community Center’s board of directors dismissed executive director Sudi West, due to what Laws described as his refusal to adhere to the policy changes that would marginalize students without bank accounts.  

In what staff members call a conflict of interest, Diedre Smith, a board member with corporate human resources industry experience, took on the interim executive director role shortly after.  Operations for 2024 are in jeopardy as staff members attempt to get their demands, as outlined in their Nov. 4 letter, heard by the board.

Wiltshire, Shaw Community Center’s board chair since 2020, declined to comment on West’s termination. However, she expressed the board’s commitment to making the center a “strong, vibrant and lasting force in the community.” 

In doing so, Wiltshire mentioned a reconciliation process that’s intended to clarify the board and staff members’ working relationship. Laws questioned the effectiveness of that process, telling The Informer that staff members had no opportunity to discuss their demands during a Dec. 13 meeting conducted by Rev. Paul Saddler and Rev. Graylan Hagler. 

She called that situation the latest example of the board’s unwillingness to understand and embrace how staff members have attempted to better the communities surrounding Shaw Community Center. 

“We push for entrepreneurship among our employees and support the businesses of our families,” Laws said. “This is something the board doesn’t acknowledge or understand. It [looks like] fraternization or conflict of interest to them [but] we are acknowledging that staff members have their own accomplishments that we should support.” 

Hagler declined to speak about the events of Dec. 13. However, he told The Informer that Shaw Community Center staff members have blocked discussions that could’ve taken place, despite what he described as the board’s willingness to entertain the issues put forth. Future engagement will likely not take place without staff members’ buy-in, he said. 

Part of what some may perceive of staff members’ stubbornness stems from what Howard calls the board of directors’ consistent absence from the affairs of the Shaw Community Center. She said such lack of engagement must be addressed with the board’s termination. 

Howard, a child care professional of nearly 30 years, started working at Shaw Community Center in 2010. Before then, she volunteered at the center, then located at Lincoln Westmoreland Housing, while pursuing her bachelor’s degree at the University of the District of Columbia. In 2019, Sharita Howard, her daughter, joined Shaw Community Center as a custodian, later becoming a program assistant and, after receiving her food handling license, an on-site food manager. 

In her role, Howard coordinates youth programming, processes applications, facilitates staff and contractor clearances, and handles financial matters. These tasks, she said, should place her in direct contact with the Shaw Community Center board of directors. 

However, as she told The Informer, board members haven’t engaged her about any aspect of her job, or operations at the center. 

‘I haven’t physically met Interim Executive Director Smith. Only seen her on Zoom screen, and that’s maybe twice out of the three years that she’s been on the board,” Howard said. “She doesn’t know us, the children, or the parents. She hasn’t been to any events like Christmas, achievement awards for the children, and the plays. She hasn’t been to any meetings.” 

A History Mired in Conflict Between Staff and Board Members

In 1991, Lincoln Congregational Temple United Church of Christ, based on 11th Street in Northwest, founded Shaw Community Center, originally named the Shaw Community Ministry. However, the ministry operated on the ground floor of Lincoln Westmoreland Housing on 7th Street in Northwest for more than 20 years. 

In 2013, programming moved to Lincoln Congregational Temple. 

West, then a staff member, assumed the executive director role in 2014 after the board installed an executive director from their church community without vetting Lincoln Westmoreland Housing residents and other community members. 

This nearly caused the program to implode, staff members told The Informer. 

West, along with Laws, Howard, Windley, and Anne Troy, a grant administrator and developer, rebuilt the program. As Laws explained, Wiltshire, a former Shaw Community Center art instructor, helped change the board’s racial composition so that Black people represented the majority. 

As executive director, West changed the name of Shaw Community Ministry to Shaw Community Center. He also created a director of development position through which Shaw Community Center was able to bring its operating budget from $80,000 to beyond $1 million. Five years ago, he collaborated with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Third District headquarters on a walk safety plan that ensured students’ safe navigation from Cleveland Elementary School, Garrison Elementary School, and other surrounding schools to Shaw Community Center. 

West later created Men Acquiring Life Skills, a mentoring and life-coaching program that’s intended to build trust with youth and directly assist in their personal and economic development. 

Today, more than a dozen staff members facilitate year-round and summer programming at Shaw Community Center for more than 120 young people, including those from Lincoln Westmoreland Housing and other nearby affordable housing complexes. Immigrant families from Latin America and Africa also count among Shaw Community Center’s clients. 

Young people in the community program are organized into groups based on their age and grade level. Kindergarteners and first graders are in the Little People cohort, while second and third graders are in the Star Stuck cohort. Fourth and fifth graders are part of the Motto Thunder cohort while pre-teens and middle school students are part of the Pioneer cohort. 

Meanwhile, young people between 13 and 18 years old enroll in Shaw Community Center’s media program, through which they receive a stipend, thanks to funds secured by the Greater Washington Community Foundation and Health Equity Fund.  

Washington, a program coordinator at Shaw Community Center, said she can personally speak to the program’s positive effect on young people, and the community at large. 

In the early 2000s, Washington served as a volunteer at the center while a student at Dunbar High School. Upon her graduation in 2011, she maintained a consistent presence in the community, eventually becoming a contractor and later a full-time program coordinator. 

As program coordinator, Washington spent the better part of a decade fostering relationships with Star Struck and Motto Thunder cohort members and their families. During the pandemic, she delved deeper into her personal and professional development when she launched a fashion venture.     

Though Washington had a chance to produce custom-made shirts for Shaw Community Center during Art All Night, she did so as an employee, not under her newly established business. She told The Informer that board members’ qualms about a possible conflict of interest complicated her efforts to flex her muscles as an entrepreneur. 

That situation, Washington said, spoke to what she called the Shaw Community Center’s board of directors’ disregard for staff members, many of whom they don’t know or haven’t met personally. 

“It’s going to take forever to open up with the board,” Washington said. “For the members to have been on the board for three years and I do not know them. It’s going to be hard if they try to have a conversation.” 

An Environment that Thrives on Personal Relationships 

Windley, a program coordinator and facilities manager at Shaw Community Center, calls himself the elder statesman of the staff. 

For nearly 14 years, he’s leaned on his vast experience as a youth mentor and organizer to establish relationships with young people and manage building operations. He also played a part in the creation of Shaw Community Center’s logo, which can be seen in front of Lincoln Congregational Temple. 

Windley told The Informer that he and staff members at Shaw Community Center encourage young people to delve into various career fields and mature as young adults. He beamed with joy as he spoke about students who returned to the program as interns and dance instructors, and those who moved into the hospitality industry upon completing college. 

Despite the impasse in board member-staff discussions, Windley maintained hope that Shaw Community Center could one day host culinary arts  and electrical engineering programs. He expressed confidence that the youth would embrace such opportunities. 

Keeping young people around the center, he said, requires keeping up with the times and embracing how they see the world, even if it clashes with adults’ perspectives. 

“We teach a lot of life lessons about what to do as young men and avoid the pitfalls of the streets,” Windley told The Informer as he explained his qualm with the Shaw Community Center board. “In this business, you have to understand the culture of the participants to come up with solutions. I’m not saying the board members are bad people, but what they’ve shown doesn’t make it look like they know what’s going on.” 

Operations at Shaw Community Center are what some people like Michelle Young call an all-hands-on-deck effort. Young, a parent-turned-volunteer-turned-staff member, told The Informer that staff members often wear many hats at the center to alleviate work pressure and promote unity. 

In her role as assistant program coordinator, Young interacts with the second and third graders in the Star Struck cohort. She said that experience gives her a front-row seat to her students’ development as humans, each with their own unique personality. 

Effectively guiding the youth, Young said, requires one to be immersed in the community and open to learning about every aspect of their lives. 

“I get to hear about what’s going on in school and I get invited to functions and games,” Young told The Informer.  “They want me to be a part of their lives. They feel the love we have for them and they know we’ll be supportive. They’re so sweet, headstrong and comical.”