ABOUT BONNIE BILLUPS:
Bonnie Billups, Jr. began his career in supportive services for families and youth at a young age. He first became involved with Ann Arbor’s own Peace Neighborhood Center as a child enrolled in the agency’s Youth Programs back in the early 1970s. Proving himself to be a reliable and mature young man, Bonnie was hired on as a Program Assistant at Peace in 1976. He continued in that capacity through 1985, helping the agency expand and establish many long-standing services such as Peace’s Summer Day Camp program in 1982. Bonnie left the agency in 1985 to travel to California and pursue a career in music. While in the Los Angeles area, he continued to work in the youth development field as a Youth Lead Specialist at Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services.
In 1991, he returned to Ann Arbor and Peace Neighborhood Center as the agency’s Program Director, a role he took on to great success for over 15 years. In 2006, he took over for the retiring Rose Martin as Peace Neighborhood Center’s Executive Director and continues to lead Peace in its role as a pillar of the youth and family service nonprofit community in Washtenaw County. Bonnie also has continued in his musical career as an instructor at Washtenaw Community College in the School of Music and Performing Arts. Bonnie is a member of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Blue Ribbon Committee where he advises the school district on decisions and strategies to provide effective service to at-risk youth. He is also a founding member of the Washtenaw Alliance for Children and Youth, serving on its Steering Committee and helping to define that collaborative’s role in establishing the best possible safety net for young people in Washtenaw County along with the other member youth development agencies.
Bonnie is proud to have served the youth and families of Washtenaw County for almost 40 years and to lead Peace Neighborhood Center into its fifth decade of its longstanding mission to break the cycle of poverty in our community.
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: In the ongoing quest to create equity and opportunity in Washtenaw County, we have to collectively address generational poverty and trauma. Now, addressing these issues early in life creates greater opportunity at successful outcomes later in life. I'm David Fair, and welcome to this week's edition of Washtenaw United on 89 one WEMU. Our guest has been working to address community issues for a very long time, and he'll tell you the need is as great today as ever. Bonnie Billups is executive director of the Peace Neighborhood Center in Ann Arbor. And I'm so glad we have the opportunity to talk again, Bonnie.
Bonnie Billups: Great to be with you, Dave.
David Fair: For those who don't know, you actually first became involved at the center as a youngster back in the 1970s. Why did you choose to get involved back then?
Bonnie Billups: Yeah, I don't think it was...well, getting involved with Peace was my choice. But meeting Rose Martin was not necessarily my choice. And so, I met Rose early on through a program called Operation Education. And then, when she became the director of Peace Neighborhood Center in 1976, she asked me if I would come and join the staff. And I did. So, I've been here in some capacity since 1976. I'm old, Dave.
David Fair: I'm right with you. But since 1976, even back then, the center was dedicated to helping people deal with a lot of the same issues that we're contending with today. We weren't having as much focused discussion necessarily on personal and familial trauma. At least, we didn't call it that. That was more of the "suck it up and let it go" generation. How have the programs and methodology changed at the center over the past almost 50 years?
Bonnie Billups: Yeah, I mean, one of the things is an important point that you've just stated that generation was "Suck it up. You'll be okay and don't cry and everything's all right with you" and all those things. And we've found that people have taken these generational traumas and struggles with them, and people have passed them on to their children. And those things have been things that have impacted people in ways that we're now understanding. And I think COVID helped to reveal more of it, to sort of pull the covers back and let us all see that we were all struggling with things to just be and to heal. And so, trauma is one of the things that we're currently working very diligently at addressing with families and young people that we work with.
David Fair: Do you think that was a silver lining of the pandemic if there is such a thing?
Bonnie Billups: Yeah. We've always known that there's been an underlying need for support for families and people who are dealing with mental health issues or what we call wellness issues, because mental health is also attached to physical health, spiritual health, emotional health, which are the four pillars of Peace's, you know, wellness program.
David Fair: Housing and food insecurity. That's growing in Washtenaw County. Income disparity--it's widening and the middle class diminishing. When we talk about breaking the cycle of generational poverty and trauma, how vital do you believe it to be to deal with it as part of early childhood education?
Bonnie Billups: It's crucial. It's crucial to the point that, in order for us to really have a system of equity and a system of where there is actually real access for all children and all families, we have to address poverty and the disparities in this community. One of the things in, you know, in Ann Arbor, especially in parts of Washtenaw County, that there's hidden pockets of poverty. And we are a very progressive county and group, but there are inequities around race, around economics that are obvious in this community that we need to address. And Peace and our programs and the other nonprofits in this county are working hard and diligently to address those.
David Fair: We're talking with Peace Neighborhood Center executive director Bonnie Billups on 89 one WEMU's Washtenaw United. And you mentioned wellness. Part of what the center offers is an afternoon wellness program for children--trying to reach them at those younger ages. What age groups are we talking about, Bonnie?
Bonnie Billups: Yeah, we have a variety of afterschool programs that work with young people from kindergarten all the way up into high school. Those programs, of course, include tutorial support, social and emotional learning, and all those kinds of things. But what we've added as additional support is our actual formalized wellness program with activities, individual counseling for young people who are in our programs and their parents, family counseling for families, mom-to-mom groups that help moms work through the changes that their children are going through and how they relate with each other, groups that are specific to experiences that people have had, that they're working through different traumas. And so, the wellness program, the expansion of us being able to offer those services to youth in our programs along with their parents, has been something that we're really excited about.
David Fair: Would it be fair to characterize it for some who go through the program as a transformational experience?
Bonnie Billups: Yeah, we're all about transformation. We're all about people finding their greatness. We're all about people determining self-determination of their greatness and what they want to be. And Peace just being an advocate and support to help you on that journey. That's what we do: to assist people, to find their greatness and transform their lives in the ways that they want to transform, so, at the end, or as they're on this road, that they move even closer toward being completely self-sufficient and in control of their own destiny.
David Fair: Our Washtenaw United conversation with Bonnie Billups continues. Bonnie is executive director of the Peace Neighborhood Center in Ann Arbor, and I want to continue along that path of journey. Because of economic distress, it's certainly not uncommon to hear that many kids have rarely, if ever, traveled beyond the city or county borders. We know that travel and diversity and culture and experience, it opens eyes., It opens minds, it opens hearts. Are there resources necessary to expose some of the kids you're working with to some level of new experience?
Bonnie Billups: That's one of the themes of all of our programs and services: to be able to expose people to the larger world in and outside of your neighborhood and see a wider vision of the possibility of what you can become. That was what helped transform my life back in, you know, in the seventies, being a part of Operation Education and being able to go to places like Washington, D.C. and the Grand Canyon. And those places allowed me to see a world that was larger than my old West Side neighborhood back in the seventies. That is a crucial part of what we do in programs here at Peace with not only our afterschool programs and summer day camps, where we go to museums and zoos and all other kind of places, but reestablishing our program that we now call "transformational road trips," where we take young people across the country into different places to be able to experience and see things. Last year, we took a young group of young boys--young men--to Florida. And we were able to go to the Everglades. We took a group of young women--young ladies--to Atlanta, and we're able to do a whole bunch of civil rights stuff. And then, we took a group of younger girls up to Lake Michigan. And for many of them, it was their first time also going across the Mackinaw Bridge, to be at Lake Michigan, which it looks like....you know, it's our ocean. That's what Lake Michigan is, you know? This year, we're planning on taking a group of young ladies to, who participated in a program that we have with U of M in NASA, we're taking a group of young ladies to Huntsville, Alabama, to the Space and Rocket Center. We'll be traveling to Washington, D.C., with a group of young male teenagers to do all the sights in Washington. And then, we'll be taking a group of young guys, who I'm really excited about. These are third, fourth and fifth grade boys. We're going up to Sault Sainte Marie to understand and watch how the Soo Locks work. Those trips, we think, are transformational with helping kids go places where they've never been before. As a kid, my parents were never able to really take us on real vacations, and we went from here to Saint Louis to visit my grandmother and grandfather. We went to a funeral somewhere in Mississippi or wherever we were going, but we never got a chance to stop and see what was happening in other places. And I just really believe that this is the way to help expose young people to a greater possibility for themselves.
David Fair: Well, Bonnie, change is often slow, but change is. So, as you assess the current situation in our community and look to the future, optimistic?
Bonnie Billups: Yeah, I'm extremely optimistic about life. I'm extremely optimistic about this community. This community is a fantastic place to live. There are great, great people and great caring people and supportive people and people who believe in the equity and equality for all and who want to know more of other people's stories, that everybody's stories are a little different.
David Fair: Well, I could talk to you all day long, but we have to call it a day for today. And I will look forward to our next conversation, Bonnie. Thank you so much for sharing today.
Bonnie Billups: You're very much appreciated. And I look forward also.
David Fair: That is Bonnie Billups, the executive director of Peace Neighborhood Center in Ann Arbor, our guest on Washtenaw United. For more information about the center and its work, visit our website at WEMU dot org, and we'll get you to everywhere you need to go. This weekly conversation series is produced in partnership with the United Way of Washtenaw County, and you hear it every Monday. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station 89.1 WEMU-FM, Ypsilanti.
RESOURCES:
Peace Neighborhood Center Youth Services
UWWC STATEMENT:
Peace Neighborhood Center is a recipient of United Way of Washtenaw County’s most recent cycle of the Power of the Purse Fund, which aims to support existing and emerging programs and initiatives that increase the financial capability of people who identify as women.
This year's investments focus on supporting parents with low incomes by providing for the basic needs of babies and young children (e.g. diapers, wipes, formula) and subsidizing the costs of child care.
In 2023, Peace Neighborhood Center received a $10,000 grant in support of after-school programming that will provide a safe and high-quality learning environment for youth of parents with low to moderate incomes.
Proceeds for the Power of the Purse Fund are made possible by the annual Power of the Purse event. The latest was held on March 8th, 2023. The event included a silent purse auction, individual and corporate donations, and honoring Kathy Sample, co-owner of Argus Farm Stop, as Woman of the Year.
WEMU has partnered with the United Way of Washtenaw Countyto explore the people, organizations, and institutions creating opportunity and equity in our area. And, as part of this ongoing series, you’ll also hear from the people benefiting and growing from the investments being made in the areas of our community where there are gaps in available services. It is a community voice. It is 'Washtenaw United.'
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