‘We have nothing like this here’: How a local, Black-owned nonprofit keeps giving back

By Rachel Henderson

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    JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (KOMU) — One Jefferson City couple is not only entering their sixth year together, but also their sixth year co-running Building Community Bridges (BCB), a local nonprofit offering various community services that also houses numerous local businesses at its headquarters.

A few of the services they offer include harm reduction kits, after school care, a food pantry, a community boxing gym and more.

This duo is made up of Douglas Wright III, the original founder of BCB, and Alicia Edwards, a hair stylist and executive director at BCB. Wright founded BCB in 2017 after being released from prison on drug charges.

“Anybody that’s willing to give everything they have, even when they don’t have much, connected me to that mission alone,” Edwards said. “Doug was wanting to create programming for kids, but me being an entrepreneur, I wanted to inspire women.”

Edwards is a product of the Jefferson City foster care system and says BCB’s mission aligns with her passion for service.

“Growing up in the foster care system, and dealing with trauma as a young person, I understood also as a young mother, that kids need this outlet,” Edwards said. “And so why not mix the two? You have after school activities for kids and entrepreneurship for kids. And then as we started doing it, it’s like, okay, we can’t get to the kid unless we reach the whole family. So what are the resources that the family needs?”

Both Wright and Edwards say their journey has not been easy, especially as Black entrepreneurs.

“A lot of people don’t want to say that there is not redlining or there is no hurdles that African Americans have to jump over that are extra that other folks don’t,” Edwards said. “There is.”

The major difficulty, according to Wright, has been proving their worth both literally and figuratively.

“I think another hurdle was the community buy in,” Edwards said. “First of all, you can see that we’re Black folks.”

Edwards’ sister, Crystine Green, also works at BCB with her husband, Lionel. This duo started at BCB as volunteers after being laid off from their jobs in 2020.

“Just being able to help the community, especially Jefferson City, because we have nothing like this here,” Green said. “And there are needs in our community. Despite housing, there’s resource needs that people are needing, and some people just really don’t know about them.”

As parents to four children, the Edwards say they wish BCB was a service they had growing up.

“We need things for our children to keep our children educated and busy with positive influences and activities,” Green said.

Within the last year, BCB received grants from the Missouri Institute of Mental Health and the Recovery Community Center’s Harm Reduction unit that made it possible to start paying its volunteers.

“BCB is funded for the next three years now,” Wright said. “We created 10 jobs as of January 1. We went from five years of 100% volunteering to a percentage of employment. So we created jobs, as they continue to learn to give back and empowering their income, their business, their brand.”

Both couples say working alongside their partners makes day-to-day operations much more fulfilling, but they also say their love for one another is one of the biggest motivators to keep going.

“Being able to work with somebody that I love and seeing things develop and blossom and being able to also do that for other individuals that come in to BCB is the biggest blessing,” Edwards said.

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