08/27/2026
🎤✊🏾 Our Program Director, Stephanie Williams, took the mic at Protect & Hold the Line of Democracy in Detroit to bring the voice of Kalamazoo and West Michigan into the room.
And she brought our founder with her.
Ms. Gwen Lanier — the woman who co-founded Mothers of Hope — is celebrating 38 YEARS of sobriety. 🙌🏾 Thirty-eight years of tenacity, faith, and resilience. Out of her own recovery journey, she built something bigger than herself: a place on Kalamazoo’s Northside where anyone — in recovery or not — could reclaim their life, rebuild their family, and build power for themselves.
That’s the blueprint we still live by: recovery → civic engagement → mobilization.
For years, Mothers of Hope has shown up for our community around entrepreneurship, education, health and wellness, Paid Sick Leave, and Reproductive Justice — registering voters, developing leaders, feeding families, and creating space for Black people to heal, learn, organize, and lead.
None of it happens alone. Grateful for our partners in this work: the The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Black Womens Roundtable: Kalamazoo, Michigan Coalition on Black Civic Participation- MCBCP, and LaTosha Brown/Black Voters Matter. 💛
Swipe/watch to hear Stephanie’s message to the movement 👇
Because Black communities have always been architects of possibility. And we’re just getting started.
Be a Protector. Be a Defender. Be the Difference.
