Neely Williams, an adjunct professor in the department of Communication and Journalism, is a long time community leader, educator, minister and activist for non-violence in youth engagement.
Williams, who has been formally involved with the Nashville community for nearly 30 years, said her journey into community outreach began through participation in Vacation Bible School at a local church where four young men spoke about living with HIV/AIDS. As a part of the men’s presentation, “the Red Cross was there, inviting people from the community to get trained and be advocates and spokespersons about the disease,” Williams said.
It was 1985, during the height of learning about HIV/AIDs. Williams stepped out into the inner city of the Nashville community to educate people on the disease.
“I call this my formal step into the community because I have always been involved in nursing homes and wherever there was a need,” Williams said.
Even at an early age, Williams had a heart for helping people and uniting cultures.
“I like to say I built my first coalition on the Kindergarten playground,” she said, “because I am innately a person that says everybody should play and get an opportunity to have the ball. And I spent a lot of days trying to make sure those who were not chosen got a chance to play anyway.”
Deciding to go back to school to obtain a degree at Vanderbilt University, Williams became trained as a chaplain, which furthered her community outreach with the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church. Since 1996, Williams has worked directly and indirectly with the outreach ministries of the Metropolitan Church in the north Nashville community.
“At our latest calculation in 2011, that church and its outreach ministry had brought over $30 million to the north Nashville area, serving persons living with HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and teaching other faith communities on how to deal with these issues,” she said.
Continuing her work with the Metropolitan Church, Williams began to develop her own coalition groups focusing on substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and STDs and bringing service providers and faith leaders together to work on issues around victims of crime. Through the victims of crime work, Williams said she has “worked with the foster system, domestic violence, DCS (specifically dealing with child abuse), youth violence prevention, and became an educator in the community on how faith communities can better understand and address these issues.”
For the last five years, Williams has worked as a director of the Pineal initiative to provide youth violence prevention, while also working as chair for the Nashville Community Coalition of Youth Safety (NCCYS). With over 300 youth organizations serving in the youth coalition, Williams has provided inner city youth with opportunities to choose a better way of life.
“I have a heart of service in the community, and I perceive that Is what I will do going out of here,” Williams said. I am called to minister on the edge.
Williams, who currently teaches Cross Cultural Communication at Lipscomb, is now a part of the Community Partners Network, a new program that allows individuals in the area to help build links to resources and strategies to uplift the community.
“You can stay here and help 30 people this week by encouraging them, giving them a hug, and send them away feeling better about themselves,” Williams said. “If you will embrace this new opportunity you will train 30 people that will touch 30 people, and then 300 people will get touched. Living by this advice of Rev. Sanderson of the Metropolitan Church, I now see the big picture.”
Continuing her outreach in the Nashville community Williams says, “There is a role and a place for everybody to help better serve our youth in the community.”
Williams’ dedication, hard work and community engagement are not in vain as she continues to build bridges “to touch a few, so that they might touch many.”