Elisabeth Williams-Omilami “Humanitarian”
Elisabeth Williams-Omilami is the daughter of the late civil rights activist Hosea Williams and the late Juanita Terry Williams, State Representative, GA. [Hosea Williams was with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. when Dr. King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, TN]. She is the wife of noted character actor Afemo Omilami . They have two children, Awodele and Juanita.
Elisabeth is CEO of Hosea Feed The Hungry and Homeless, founded by her father in 1971. She is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the National Conference of Black Mayors Fannie Lou Hamer Unsung Heroine Award. She is founder of one of Atlanta’s earliest theatre companies, “People’s Survival Theater” as well as ”Summer Artscamp.”
She graduated from Hampton University with a B.A. in Theatre. She is a playwright, “There is A River in My Soul;” an arts advocate, actress, both theater and film, appearing in the award-winning “I’ll Fly Away.” She is an humanitarian.
(Interview with Flaimahmy, August 7, 2009)
FM: When you became CEO of Hosea Feed The Hungry and Homeless in 2000 you and your husband, Afemo, tripled the numbers served from 50,000 to 150,000 and expanded the budget from $200,000 to $1.5 million. We’ve read that your dream is to find sustainable funding for the organization. Layout that dream for us.
EO: Sustainable funding is funding that will provide a fixed income so that we can serve the families that come here on a daily basis.  Right now, this morning, I have three families out in the front lobby. One of them is a homeless mother with two teenagers.  The second, two elderly white gentlemen; one of them is homeless.  The third is a young family that is getting ready to be evicted. None of our grant programs fit any of these situations.  The funding for the grant program is so small. We need to be able to identify some fixed sustainable funding that is unrestricted so that we can help cases that are like those that I see here this morning and that literally, at Hosea Feed The Hungry, I see every morning.
So many times grant funds that you might get from the city or the county or from Washington are for ballet or the opera or the arts or botanical gardens. All that is good, but we are in need of services. Mankind is our business so the baby that you hear crying in the background has probably been sleeping in a car all night. We have to find income to support the needs of our community.  That’s our challenge at Hosea Feed The Hungry.
FM:Â What drew you to the teachings of Ghandi and are you guided by those teachings today?
EO:  I think because my father was on Martin Luther King’s Executive Staff.  I sat in as a young girl on many of those meetings and would quite often hear them talk about Ghandi, talk about how the Indians fought off the British, talk about why non-violence was the only answer in a situation where aggression, someone is being aggressive towards you or there is a societal oppressor like America was oppressing, and still continues to in some cases oppress, African-Americans, during the sixties Civil Rights Movement. For us to take up weapons to fight that war would have been foolish. Inevitably the government would have won. Whether it was the north or the south or whatever part of the government it was we could never have that many weapons. Non-violence is a method of protest that allows people to just have such a presence of the community against an issue that’s wrong that just by sheer volume of numbers the policies of a country will start to respond without violence.
Now does this mean that people won’t get killed? No, it doesn’t because in order for non-violence to work quite often many people have to give their lives. But, the life of one given for the whole, that martyr and that sacrifice will do more good in the long run than for a group of people to take up some weapons against a government that could come in and really do some damage to many many families. Ghandi was a teacher for us of what non-violence truly means and we took that and used that in this country during the Civil Rights Movement and were very successful.
FM:Â Do you have an advisor or mentor that you speak to regularly to help you?
EO: I have several advisors that I talk to, none really with regards to running this non-profit.  Hosea Feed The Hungry is now in it’s 40th year. It is the largest African-American female owned non-profit in the state of Georgia and probably around this region. Not that there aren’t other non-profits like the Y and others that are run by African-American females but I’m talking about ownership.  I actually have white male ministers that mentor me. They talk to me about social justice, that we must cry out for the poor. I have African-American female attorneys who talk to me about the structure of the organization, fundraising and proposal writing. So it takes a lot of consultation.
The Bible tells us that there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors. Certainly that is true especially when the rules keep changing and for me running a non-profit the rules keep changing. The rules of foundations and what they want to fund, the rules of  public money for city, state and county, they keep changing. So I need someone who has their eye on the state-of-the-art to advise me. Quite honestly I need many more of those than I currently have.
FM: You have worked as an humanitarian in the Philippines, Haiti and Uganda. What is the difference between poverty in those places as compared to the United States?
EO:  Well, poverty is relative. We may have people here at our Hosea Feed The Hungry Food Bank who come to get food because they have no food at home. Now they may pull up in their car to the dock to get food boxes whereas in a country like Haiti where we just came from, people walk for miles to get rice and many times they are so weak when they get there that they can barely carry what you have given them. They then have to walk miles to get back home.
I would say that the results of poverty on the family structure and on the society is much more devastating in a country like Haiti than in the United States but at the same time I’ve seen families here in Atlanta breakup because of financial issues or the woman’s not working and she just wants to just stay home all day and be taken care of  but the family needs two incomes or vice versa, the man isn’t working, so it’s all relative. We’re all pretty much the same.
In the Philipines, the difference is that they are up in the mountains so at least the air is clean, at least the water is clean for them, at least the environment is not polluted whereas in a country like Haiti, in Port au Prince, you’ve got the emissions from the cars, you’ve got the water, the sewage; much more environmental oppression as well. Wherever we go, whatever we can do at Hosea Feed The Hungry we do it because we feel that we are responsible because if God is going to give us the means to go then we’re going to go.
FM:Â When do you remember feeling that you were responsible for the well-being of others?
EO: I guess when my father and mother would pack all of our Christmas toys up and we would have to ride through the housing projects and give them away. The first time that happened it really upset me because I didn’t want to do that and I didn’t understand why I had to do that. Then I guess maybe a year or so later I began to think, well, they don’t have anything and I have all of this so maybe I am supposed to share what I have with them and that  is why it is important to get children at a very young age involved in community service so that they can get it before they get older.
I guess that was kind of a turning point for me in understanding that there are haves and there are have nots and the haves are supposed to help the have nots. They’re not just supposed to have what they have just for themselves. Certainly I found out that in helping others therein lies my own salvation because otherwise  I would be a very self-centered selfish person and wouldn’t realize my full self unless through service to others I see what truly human beings are meant to be .
FM: Do you think young people today are taught the importance of giving to those less fortunate?
EO: Sometimes we have the volunteers feed 9,000 people a year here at Hosea Feed The Hungry and they go to hoseafeedthehungry.com to register. Many many families bring their children for that very reason and we always try to have something for children to do. Even as young as six, to pass out these pies or stuff  these little ziplock bags with toothpaste.  I think in general families do know and do want the children involved in community service and many of them have to do something at their school or college .  We encourage them to come to Hosea Feed The Hungry to do their community service. This is a grass-roots organization that people can come into our building and have direct interaction with other human beings, not just  be in a room typing or stuffing envelopes.
FM:Â What is your most fond memory?
EO: Wow. I don’t know. I guess it would be those civil rights mass meetings when we would be singing the songs of the movement and people would be getting ready to either boycott or march or do some other civil disobedience to bring about justice and  human rights. It is in those mass meetings that you become one with each other and you overcome your fear of death because you know that you are going to march and that somebody might die. Overcoming the fear of death was a major thing for me and just being there with the people there was a sense of community and a sense that we were all after the same thing and through the music gaining strength. Those are some of my fondest memories.
FM:Â What do you think about the role of women today as compared to your mother’s generation?
EO: Obviously, many women have left the home to go into the workplace and have done very well in running corporations, magazines, digital sources of information like this one and do very well outside of the home. Also, our sense of sexuality, our sense of owning our bodies has changed to the extent that we can be very up front about what we want to happen.
I do think that some of those old-fashioned ways are better. Old-fashioned ways of seduction are better than kind of in your face, look at this, you can have it. Old- fashioned ways of  raising children in my opinion are much better than your child having to be in the day care center from the time you go to work until 6:00 p.m. at night. You turn around and your child is spending more time with that day care center provider than they are with you.
So, there are some of the old-fashioned ways that I prefer. Our new technology and our new way of life sometimes do not allow those old-fashioned ways to happen. We don’t need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We need to remember the value of being at home and raising a child.
FM:Â How do you relax?
EO:  I go to sleep. I pass out at night when I go home from working fourteen hour days. I relax by the ocean. Actually Omilami, which is my last name, means “Water healed me.” It is a Yoruba name, a Nigerian name.   I relax most effectively when I am at the ocean and my Blackberry is not with me. Now, has that happened in 2009? No. It hasn’t happened yet. So, I just use my time at home with my family in the evenings and on the weekends to relax.
FM: Can you tell us in your own words what you think makes you a Fly Mommy?
EO: I guess I’m a Fly Mommy because I’ve got my children here in a family-owned business. They are working here. They enjoy service to others.  My children went to Haiti with me. My son went to Venezuela. My daughter went to South Africa. They are both doing missions’ work and they enjoy it.  I’m also very proud of them. They see the value of making a life and not just making a living.
I have a lot of god-children and other spiritual children who call me mommy. I take time out for them too. I’m growing into being a Fly Mommy. I’m not all the way there yet, but I’m getting there.
FM: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
EO: Just own yourself; love yourself. Don’t compare yourself to anybody. Just be your own personal best. Make your mark on the world and make sure this world is a different place, a better place, when you leave here than it was when you came and you will have fulfilled your purpose for living.
You can find out more about Hosea Feed The Hungry at www.hoseafeedthehungry.com.  You can also see Mrs. Omilami in the upcoming movies “The Blind Side” starring Sandra Bullock and “Provinces of Night” with Kris Kristofferson and Val Kilmer.
