Who will be the next Mother of the Year?

Find out this weekend as the Richmond County NAACP holds its 38th annual Mother of the Year banquet on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the East Hamlet Community Center.

The highlight of the program is the crowning of the Mother of the Year. The event also serves as a membership drive for the local branch.

Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at the door.

In addition to the contest, the event features food, entertainment and inspiring remarks from a guest speaker.

This year, Minister Michelle Laws, the former executive director of the N.C. State Conference of the NAACP, will serve up food for thought.

Laws is a licensed minister, public speaker and a passionate advocate for the poor, women and children. She is an associate minister at Union Baptist Church in Durham, where her pastor is the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Ray Hammond.

Laws said she has devoted her life’s work as a laborer in God’s vineyard, preaching the gospel to the poor, healing the broken and proclaiming liberation and justice for the oppressed.

Professionally, she is a consultant specializing in health disparities research, program development and evaluation with a focus on improving health outcomes for the poor and African-American women and children.

A native of Chapel Hill, Laws earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and a master’s degree in sociology from North Carolina Central University, where she graduated magna cum laude; and is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Health at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

She has taught undergraduate sociology courses at NCCU, North Carolina State University, and in federal and state prisons.

She also served several years as the legislative liaison for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services; and is the former CEO and senior associate of MACLaws & Associates, a private consulting firm specializing in social and human services policy development and program evaluation.

She is the founder and owner of Christian Tees Inc. a web-based T-shirt company catering to Christian women.

Laws said she believes one of the greatest tragedies of social progress is for people to ascend the social and economic ladder and forget those who are left behind by ignoring the plight of the poor and less privileged.

Her service to the community has won her several prestigious awards, including: the 2010 NAACP President’s Award for Outstanding Leadership; 2010 Women on the Move award from the Charlotte Mecklenburg NAACP; 2010 Woman of Distinction Award; the 2009 Village Pride Award; and the 2009 Indy Award.

Laws is married to Karl Quintin Laws, also from Chapel Hill. She describes her husband as “one of the best God created.”

Laws
https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_Michelle-Laws.jpegLaws

By Kimberly Harrington

For the Daily Journal