Providing access for the most vulnerable

Lisa Williams has been called a “latter-day Harriet Tubman,” for good reason: she has made it her mission to counter child sex trafficking and exploitation.

To date, she has helped spare the lives of 230 girls and 14 boys through intensive rehabilitation programs supported by her not-for-profit, Circle of Friends: Celebrating Life, Inc., which she founded in 1999 “to bring women together to raise money and awareness and to dismantle the social injustices that render them more susceptible to violence and the criminal justice system.”

“Each program was opened as a beacon of hope,” Williams says. “Our aim was to listen, bring relief, and restore dignity to women and children who are experiencing unbelievable suffering.”

In 2005, Williams founded Living Water for Women, a residential facility near Atlanta, Ga., for women who had been incarcerated for minor offenses associated with being trafficked but who could not leave prison without a home address. In 2007, she founded Living Water for Girls, a rescue and rehabilitation safe house, also in Georgia, for girls who were victims of sex trafficking. And in 2013, she opened the Living Water Learning Resource Center, a training program where survivors could take GED courses and receive vocational training and counseling. She also helped drive the development and passage of the Safe Harbor/Rachel’s Law Act, the first safe harbor law in America named in honor of a sex-trafficked youth survivor.

Today, Williams is dissolving COF to focus on what she sees as her lasting legacy: funding higher education scholarships for young women in extreme need. After reading about BU’s Century Challenge, she says, “everything changed about how I would create significant and lasting impact in the lives of the most vulnerable among us.” The Challenge—an ongoing initiative through which BU matches the spendable income from all new endowed scholarships for 100 years—inspired her to fund the Circle of Friends Impact Scholarship Fund and to gather and direct support to fund the Circle of Friends Impact Legacy Scholarship Fund. Both will support undergraduates at BU, with a preference for those who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged families, affected by adverse childhood experiences, and who have elected an area of study in the helping or STEM professions.

Williams says education was critical to her own success. She began graduate studies in organizational management in 1987 through BU’s overseas military program while serving as a petroleum surveillance engineer in Italy.

She is thrilled that BU has a way for her to give others that opportunity.

“The Century Challenge offered to double my impact for 100 years,” Williams says. “I said, ‘This must exist for that girl who will dare greatly, for that woman who has fought her entire life just for the right to believe in herself, and as a catalyst to unleash hope and unite humanity. We can give them access—an opportunity for an education at one of the best schools in the nation. We don’t know your name, baby girl, but we know that one day you will exist. And it doesn’t matter if we’re living to witness your hard-fought personal victories, educational achievements, and substantial impact on this world. What matters is that there is a hope and a future, and BU, the Century Challenge, allows us to be that hope in the future.’”

The words resonate with Crystal Williams, BU’s associate provost for diversity and inclusion, as she works to build a community where all can thrive and participate fully. “We change institutions by changing the circumstances on the ground,” she says. “We shift culture so that more people are able to bring their full brilliance to bear on behalf of the common endeavor. Gifts like Lisa Williams’ Century Challenge scholarship funds help us get there.”