Our Citizens are empowered to reach their full potential and enabled to contribute to the world.
Brookwood in Georgetown (BiG) was started by a desperate mom on a mission to find something meaningful for her daughter with special needs to do upon graduation from high school. The program launched in 2011 with eight adults, who we call “Citizens,” using free church space. Today we have 80 Citizens with special needs, including autism, spread across three campuses. Our main campus and one satellite are in Georgetown. We also have a satellite in Austin.
Our Citizens are viewed and treated as gifted individuals made in the image of God. They are empowered to reach their full potential and enabled to contribute to the world. The gift shop in which the beautiful creations they have made, and in which they work, has been voted the Best Boutique in Georgetown the past three years. Our cafe, in which they also work, has a 5-star rating on Yelp. They can interact with the community in ways that change the perceptions others might have of this population.
The Mission
Brookwood in Georgetown is a very “out of the box” innovative vocational community for adults with special needs where everything we make is sold in a beautiful high-end gift shop, cafe and greenhouse. We want to change the way our world views this population by taking the “status quo” – providing these individuals with custodial care – to creating beautiful, marketable items to sell to help sustain the vocational community they enjoy every day.
What Would You Do with $5,000 and a Day of Service?
We recently began a residential program to help with one of the greatest challenges for parents of children who have special needs: “What will happen to my child once I am no longer able to care for them?” Volunteers would interact with the Citizens in our residential program, and the $5,000 would help fund residential scholarships.