Meet Brenda Richardson the Angel of Southeast DC
WASHINGTON, D.C.— When Brenda Richardson began serving as a board member for the Earth Conservation Corps (ECC) 25 years ago, the most difficult part wasn’t the recruiting or the funding, it was the murder.“ When we first started we had corp members that were killed periodically,” Richardson said. “That was the toughest time for the whole organization.” From the time Richardson started with the nonprofit, at least nine core members have been murdered including 19-year-old Diamond Teague who was shot and killed outside his home in 2003. As the current executive director of the ECC, she helps to educate over 3,000 students a year on the impact of the environment on urban communities through volunteer projects like the Anacostia River cleanup.
The director is inviting like a community aunt. Her routine consist of responding to dozens of emails and attending multiple meetings a day. Her job is to oversee ECC programs like Wings Over America, the innovative that educates youth on how to rehabilitate injured raptors in order to set them back into the wild. A part of that means ensuring the ECC has proper funding. Richardson said funding for the organization mainly comes from local and federal government grants. “Balancing the money can be challenging. The toughest thing for a nonprofit is to get funding for everything,” she said. The grant funding for the organization does not cover overhead cost like building maintenance.
When asked if she always knew she wanted to balance funds for an environmental group, Richardson could hardly stop laughing. “Me, save the environment? No, indeed.” she giggled. The upbeat director grew up on the border of Mexico in El Paso, Texas speaking fluent Spanish. “I came here when I was 12 and I didn’t know I was black until I got here,” Richardson said.
She graduated with a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland and recalls she had “plans to save the world”. Richardson made the leap into the environmental field after attending a meeting at the University of the District of Columbia with a friend. “I'm sitting in a room with all these white people and they start speaking this whole other language I didn't understand,” she said. Her friend explained the importance of the ecosystem in layman's terms and she was instantly motivated. “I've got to do something about this,” Richardson recalls saying. “I have to get my community involved because the environment is not black or white it's green.”
She was later recruited to the ECC board by founder Robert Nixon, who Richardson said, “Wanted to work with kids no one else did”. She has been getting the community involved for more than two decades now and had overseen hundreds of environmental projects from planting trees to monitoring water quality.
Former ECC Corp member, Nneka Anosike, worked under Richardson in 2016: an experience she said “was an honor”. Anosike remembers Richardson being “meticulous” during a door to door project aimed to reduce energy cost for residents in wards 7 and 8. “She taught us that there was strength in numbers, but there was also strength in a few determined folk.”Richardson has seen her determination pay off. Today, the ECC manages Diamond Teague Park, an $8 million dollar public plaza in Southeast D.C. named for Teague. It includes water taxis, canoes, and two piers.
Richardson’s two desks sit inside the ECC Pump House located on the park. Atop of one lies a computer next to an inbox tray full of permission waivers from kids, and mail from funders, on the other, a row of educational material, and notes on the effectiveness of the ECC projects and programs. “It’s hectic. Every day is different then before,” Richardson said.The environment has seen a change too. “The Anacostia River is cleaner than it has ever been,” Richardson said.
In January 2018, Mayor Bowser invested $4.7 million into developing Kingman and Heritage Islands, both in the Anacostia River. The ECC has also seen a reduction in violent crime. “None of our corp members have been murdered in quite some time so I’m grateful about that.”The director who can even find the beauty in a polluted river said: “The beauty of the work I’m doing now is that I get to save the world and the environment at the same time.”