September 17, 2019

Meet Star Williams of Stars United Global Outreach in Southern Sector of Dallas but we serve other cities in the DFW area

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Star Williams.

Star , please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Prior to retiring from the Navy, I knew that I wanted to work in a field where I could continue to serve. I’ve always volunteered with renowned organizations such as American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and Home Life Thailand, but I wanted to make difference in the community in which I grew up in. Immediately after retirement I decided to start a nonprofit organization called Stars United Global Outreach in 2015 where my focus area would be to work with kids who came from a very similar background as I did. I grew up in time where you had three options, go to work, go to college, or go to the military and didn’t have many programs in my community that taught us any skills that would give us a large pool of opportunities to choose from or the ability to use our creativity that would allow us to make sound educational and career decisions. So we wanted to bring quality programs to our community that would focus on four skills that we felt are important to youth development which are leadership, financial literacy, life skills, and entrepreneurship. We know that our kids in our underprivileged and underserved communities are amazing and we wanted to be instrumental in changing their labels from “at risk” to “at promise” by not only creating a positive atmosphere but also providing them with strong mentors and role models.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road for several reasons. First and most importantly is our lack of parental engagement. Often times in the communities that we serve our parents do not see the value in educational activities as it compares to youth sports. We encourage our parents to also stay for our classes so that they can see their kids eyes light up because they are learning material that in most cases is not taught in the classroom. Additionally we struggle with partnering with many schools and other programs because of a number of reasons from budgeting to space issues. Although these are just a few of our struggles we do not allow the struggles to outweigh the value of what we are giving to our youth. We’ve had some amazing partners that believed in our mission and vision and they surely keep us motivated and encouraged to keep reaching for the stars.

Please tell us about Stars United Global Outreach .
Stars United Global Outreach was founded in 2015 with a mission to work with at risk youth to deliver high impact training by empowering, educating, and mobilizing them to create social change and break barriers. Our vision is to provide programs and workshops that teach our students life skills, leadership skills, and financial literacy with a keen focus on entrepreneurship. We strive to also provide strong mentors, and positive role models. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that we create a positive atmosphere that will lead them in the best direction to make sound educational plans and career goals.

Our organization has a program called Blueprint For Success where we teach four main programs: Teen Success (Leadership), Smart Investments (Financial Literacy), Entrepreneurship, and Life Skills. We are very well know for our Entrepreneurship Program of which we are most proud of! Our entrepreneurship program started because we began to see kids attend our programs who had amazing ideas and creativity but had no clue of how to turn those ideas into profit all while creating jobs in our community. As of today we are very proud to have five teenpreneurs start their profitable businesses.

At Stars United Global Outreach we believe what sets us apart is that we don’t focus on hosting programs and workshops that are popular but rather focus on the needs of the community and ways to help improve the educational programs. We also help students explore non traditional career opportunities without bias, allowing the students to get a full view of life not based on their circumstances. Our organization also goes into those forgotten neighborhoods so that we can continue to help our students defy the odds of what their surroundings say they can accomplish.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Wow! This is a great question and funny the most challenging because I have so many being raised by an amazing mother. My absolute favorite memory as a child was waking up on a Saturday morning to blasting old school music. Although we knew this was clean up time, which can be horrible for most kids, my siblings and I knew that this time was going to be fun because my mom pulled out all the stops when it came to her theatrics. We would listen to artist like Prince (our favorite), Pattie Label, and Chaka Khan and just sing and dance to our hearts were content. By the time we were finished the house was spotless and there were no whining or complaints in sight about cleaning. Yes you can say she tricked us into believing cleaning was fun using her props such as a mop disguised as her microphone.

Pricing: