Valerie
Johnson
Associate Pastor
Leadership and Administration
Check out Pastor Valerie's blog!
Valerie Johnson is a native of Boston, Massachusetts. She began her relationship
with Jesus Christ in 1990 and has been actively involved in Kingdom work ever
since. Over the years she discovered a passion for blessing adolescent girls
and women to live healthy, whole and purposeful lives. In October of 2007,
she was ordained as a pastor at Life Church Ministries. Valerie lives in Roxbury
with her teenaged daughter, Kala.
- Pastor Valerie Johnson (click on this link for fuller biographical sketch)
-
Valerie
Johnson, Associate Pastor
Valerie Johnson was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Boston
public schools.
Valerie received a
Certificate in Urban Studies from the Community Fellows Program of Massachusetts
Institute of Technologyin Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1995 and she
received her B.A. in Community Planning & Management from
the University of Massachusetts, Boston in 1998.
In 1990 Valerie committed her life to following Jesus Christ. As she
grew in her relationship with the Lord she has grown in service to her
community. Valerie has had several years of experience designing, developing
and delivering services to improve the lives and circumstances of urban
youth and communities with unique challenges:
- She has worked in partnership with Boston Police Youth Violence Strike
Force and Operation HomeFront, the Department of Youth Services, the
Boston Ten Point Coalition, probation and local public schools.
- She has specialized in creating services for system involved girls.
In response to documented gaps in services for vulnerable populations
of girls, she has coordinated city and state agencies, along with local
service providers, to deliver targeted programming for DYS committed
girls through the Female Focus Initiative for Roxbury Youth Works, Inc.
- She trained 35 adolescent girls to serve as peer educators and to plan
two health summits.
- She developed the Girls Get Real after school program
- She planned the YWCA Boston's 2nd and 3rd Annual Health and Wellness
Summits for adolescent girls.
Valerie feels a particular calling
to help women and adolescent girls live healthy, whole and purposeful lives. Here
are some of her accomplishments in this area:
- She devised My Sister’s Keeper, a girls’ mentoring program
matching dozens of women from local churches with system involved
girls.
- She delivered
comprehensive trainings for 100 people in churches seeking to mentor
high-risk girls.
- She served on the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee 2003-2005-appointed
by former Governor Mitt Romney as a member of the newly reconstituted
State Advisory Group. She co-chaired the committee on gender-specific
programming.
- She co-chaired
the Dorchester Community Roundtable’s Subcommittee on Dating Violence
and conceived and launched a public education campaign.
- She created the Committee
on Girls’ Matters, an interagency collaboration comprising probation,
schools, detention centers, community-based organizations, university
researchers, police, mental health providers, and the attorney
general’s office to develop wraparound services for high-risk girls.
- In 2001, she coordinated an ad hoc
committee to organize Boston’s first two-day conference on girls:
“Celebrating Boston’s Girls: Sharing Resources, Building Strength.”
More than 300 practitioners, researchers, and girls participated.
- She created and co-chaired the Girls’
Services Committee consisting of practitioners for the purpose
of improving the delivery of DYS girls’ services.
Valerie
has worked in partnership with the following agencies:
In October of 2007, Valerie was ordained as a pastor
at Life Church. Valerie lives in Roxbury with her teenaged
daughter, Kala.
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