Tonya Bradley-Brown is the founder of Generations Empowering Multitudes (GEMs). In efforts to fulfill a vision that was given to her, she has been led to start an organization that through her pain has created her passion. She has been led down many paths in her lifetime, and with every journey there have been lessons, laughter, and life-time relationships established with individuals of many facets. From experiencing the best of times with her family to weathering the worst of times, she has endured through much faith and prayer.
Focusing on youth of incarcerated parents is personal to her because her daughter who was four months at the time her father was incarcerated, and she experienced the most critical challenges during the next five years to come.
During this time, she became a single parent, lost her job, and dealt with many other pressing issues. She feels that it was nothing but the grace of God that sustained her to be able keep her mental faculties to sustain her family.
The beauty of this whole ordeal is that her daughter was not negatively affected by these changes unlike so many other children who are of incarcerated parents. So often incarceration is due in part to generational curses, where there are other members of the child's family that are or have been incarcerated.
She has been to numerous prison facilities and always paid special attention to the children that were there visiting their fathers and the interaction that was or wasn’t there. She would feel their pain and wonder about their thoughts and how she could make it better. It became her mission to empower others to have that same determination. It was critical to create an environment of positive support and values, while focusing on education, and the constructive use of time for a successful foundation for her child to build upon.
During this time, she received her Undergrad and Graduate degrees and her daughter excelled in her education and is an honor student.
It was this experience that has encouraged her to develop the GEMS Foundation who primary mission is to work with these special needs children to cultivate future leaders and entrepreneurs by providing educational assistance, recreation, social skill development, and civic engagement opportunities.
Please lend your support to Tonya and the GEMS Foundation on their very important mission to change the world, one child at a time.
GEMs Foundation P.O. Box 49083
Lawrenceville, GA, 30049
770-712-1666