In less than five years since graduating from Niagara College’s Social Service Worker program, Erica Williams has taken great steps to ensure the world around her is a better place for some of the most oppressed and racialized in society.
During her final year of studies, whilst working in a local community service organization, Williams received feedback from a resident that there was a severe gap in the industry she was entering—specifically for those who identify as Black, Caribbean or of African descent.
She realized that although many hair-care and beauty donations came in, very few were specifically for Black women. As a Black woman herself she understood the frustration in this and, rather than brush the situation aside, decided to do something about it and offer the support herself.
‘Erica’s Embrace Support Services’ began the same year Williams obtained her NC diploma in 2018. The non-profit started humbly, with just Williams’ friends and family donating specific personal care products. Fast forward just a few years and, through the power of social media and word-of-mouth, it has since grown into a large reaching organization, one that routinely collects and distributes Black hair-care and beauty products to shelters across various cities in Southwestern Ontario, including the Greater Toronto Area, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, and the Niagara Region.
To date, Williams said there is not a single shelter that has refused Erica’s Embrace’s services. They are the only known organization of this kind in the area.
“I always had the desire and the passion to help others. It’s one thing to be in a situation and know how you feel in that moment, but it’s another to then say ‘I don’t want anyone else to have to feel like that or to go through that,’” said Williams.
From an early age, she became passionate about supporting those fleeing domestic violence. She understood, through personal lived experiences, that the existing organizations to help such matters needed people who genuinely care. Choosing the social and community services sector came naturally, as Williams was having extremely adverse experiences attempting to secure social assistance for her young family. This gave her the push to apply to Niagara College and eventually enter the field, with a goal to help others avoid the same negative occurrences. She continues to be employed as a registered social service worker at a local child and family services organization.
Her determination to help her community expanded in May of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Williams and her now team of three at Erica’s Embrace decided to include advocacy services as part of their repertoire, for those who felt especially vulnerable, specifically within the child welfare and school systems. She chose this stream to specify as Black children are largely over-represented in the child welfare system and, along with Indigenous children, are the most disproportionately apprehended racial groups in Ontario.
In 2020, she was also selected to act on the St. Catharines Anti-Racism Advisory Committee, a city-funded initiative created to help improve the lives of all residents and advise City Council with knowledge and resources to encourage a range of perspectives, experiences and ideas within their decision making.
“I’m proud that I thought about it [creating Erica’s Embrace] and acted on it,” said WIlliams. “We all have dreams and desires, but we don’t always act on them.
“I feel like I have done that, and I’m just so happy I started it and didn’t sit on the thought.”
