Alice Drake

East White Oak Community Center

Alice Drake is the Executive Director of the East White Oak Community Center, and founder of a nonprofit, Village Mothers.  She grew up in the neighboring community of Woodmere Park one street over from the East White Oak Community Center. Some of her best friends lived in East White Oak, and her adolescent years included visiting them at their homes and attending weekend dances and recreational activities at the East White Oak Community Center. 

The East White Oak community was a cocoon spun by committed elders and village mothers, who created opportunity and safety for the neighborhood youth. They did it so subtly that it wasn’t until Drake came back to the Center as a volunteer three decades later, that she realized how much time, toil, energy, commitment, and love had gone into creating this place.  She made it her mission to continue the work of the community’s village mothers, and preserve the history of the mill village and the East White Oak Community Center.

 “I am proud to be part of what got woven on the invisible looms outside of the mill and into the neighborhood: the fabric of provision and enrichment. I stand, like those before me, as a village mother who takes care of children who aren’t her own, who provides a safe place, who encourages the dreams of young people and the hearts of elders and as one whom, mostly, strives to keep the doors of community wide open.”