Q&A with Carroll Gardens Association
PACT’s Senior Director of Development, Cherise Charleswell, sat down for an eye-opening and inspiring discussion with 2026 Freedom Awards honoree, Carroll Gardens Association — hear from their team, Executive Director, Ben Fuller-Googins, and Program Coordinator, Wendy Guerrero.
Would you mind introducing yourselves and your role at Carroll Gardens Association?
Hello everyone, my name is Wendy Guerrero. I am the Program Coordinator of Carroll Gardens Association (CGA). My role is to support our domestic workers community through training, workforce development, and community engagement. I work closely with our members, so our communities can have the resources they need, and access to everything that we offer in the organization.
And my name is Ben Fuller-Googins, I'm the Executive Director here at CGA. I have been working at CGA for 11 years, and I was appointed to the Executive Director position last year. As the Executive Director, I oversee a little bit of everything, but the Domestic Worker Program is certainly the closest to my heart, and one of the most life-giving programs that we do here at CGA.
Please tell us about Carroll Gardens Association, your mission, and your core programs; especially the ones that are around housing, advocacy, and workforce development.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] Carroll Gardens Association was founded in Brooklyn during the 1970s as a very grassroots organization, with the belief that residents who are closest to the problems are also closest to the solutions. Throughout our history, we’ve been led by this belief that centering residents and workers not only makes the most sense, but is the best path forward to identifying solutions, whether it's housing issues or workplace issues. Our work is centered on working class communities and immigrant workers. We carry out housing advocacy and domestic worker organizing. Affordable housing has been one of the core components of our organization since we started; and it's even more relevant today. We actually own and manage 150 units of housing in Red Hook and Carroll Gardens. This has provided a foundation for working-class families to raise their families, and even generations, in these neighborhoods that have seen extreme gentrification that otherwise wouldn't be able to find affordable housing. We're really proud of our ongoing commitment to developing and maintaining affordable housing. We are actually in the process of developing 300 new units of permanently affordable housing in Red Hook, which will be amongst the first new affordable housing units in the area in decades. It is on the horizon, and something that we are truly excited about. In addition to the housing that we provide, we do a lot of organizing with residents in the neighborhood around tenants' rights; assisting with issues such as not getting repairs or experiencing harassment from a landlord.
In addition, we coordinate a tenant’s union where residents are able to come together, to again help to identify the needed solutions. We also provide mutual aid and peer support. When it comes to our work on advocacy and organizing, when bringing together tenants and domestic workers to discuss budgets and/or legislative priorities that will increase resourcing for affordable housing, tenant rights, domestic worker rights, or win new protections for tenants, or domestic workers. We are currently actively engaged in several campaigns in the city and state, and work in coalition with other organizations so that we can leverage our power collectively. So, those are the two core areas of our work on advocacy, organizing, and affordable housing.
[Wendy Guerrero] Carroll Gardens Association’s other core program is workforce development, where we work to improve the lives of immigrants, caregivers, and domestic workers by offering services and programs that include professional development training, digital literacy, leadership programs, and more. Additionally, we work to empower the community to advocate for their rights as domestic workers, so that they can have access to fair wages and safe working conditions.
Please share more about the domestic work industry and what makes it unique.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] For those who are not familiar with the domestic worker industry it has a unique history and challenges, and involves workers who are nannies, house cleaners, and caregivers. We like to say it's the work that makes all work possible. Domestic workers are taking care of children and elderly, our homes, and it's largely invisibilized and excluded, so domestic work comes out of and is still very much connected to the legacy of slavery. In fact, aside from farm workers (particularly sharecroppers in the South), domestic workers are the only industry that has been systematically excluded from worker protections that other industries have. At CGA we are very mindful of the legacy of domestic work and the real challenges of workers who are working in private households, the power dynamics that that brings, and the challenges of enforcing worker rights. It’s something we grapple with every day. Domestic workers continue to be predominantly immigrant Black women who are mostly undocumented and provided with low wages.
I always share with people my most simplistic way of describing what human trafficking is, it's just the exploitation of vulnerabilities, and domestic workers have various intersecting vulnerabilities. It's being an immigrant, having an undocumented status, lower wages, and then there’s the power dynamics of being isolated in a home. With CGA’s understanding of these vulnerabilities, were you fully aware of how they may be linked to trafficking prior to your partnership with PACT?
[Wendy Guerrero] Yes, absolutely, and it is because we work so closely with our community. We were aware, but we really were unsure on how to address the situation. This is the basis of our partnership with PACT. Through this partnership members of our community are receiving critical information about trafficking from identifying victims and how to say something — or report safely and seek help. Every time PACT conducts a workshop, our participants tell us that they are “amazing” , “informative”, and “helpful”, and this is because many of them are also parents who are interested in protecting children. They are concerned and want to know what they could be doing to protect their children at home when they are not there with them.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] I appreciate how you frame the vulnerability, because I think before this partnership, as Wendy mentioned, every week, we get workers that come through our doors with various workplace issues, violations, and I don't think we necessarily had the framework of trafficking. But, there is vulnerability for an immigrant, undocumented domestic worker, working in a private household, where they might not have any access to a support system, or know where to turn. To me, that is the ultimate definition of vulnerability. In these conditions, there is already so much exploitation, whether it's wage, or physical or trafficking, it happens regularly in the domestic workers industry. Being able to connect with PACT who have provided language to help deepen our understanding of what we were seeing regularly, but not necessarily connecting the dots has been really helpful. It's a natural extension of what our work is, trying to build power and protections for these workers that are doing such essential work. And yet, they are so ripe for exploitation and vulnerability.
Absolutely, and I'm glad to even have this discussion about providing that language, because I believe if we just keep the framework simplified enough, that it could be something that is a general understanding between folks working in the same arena, but at different parts of the piece.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] Another organization that we work closely with is called Damayan, they organize with Filipino migrant workers, and they have had some really high-profile trafficking cases involving United Nations diplomats trafficking nannies and housekeepers; and this case and others like it was really my understanding of what constitutes trafficking, ot the more day-to-day, and often overlooked cases that are happening here in the U.S. domestically. PACT has been extremely helpful in helping to broaden our framework of understanding.
Since partnering with PACT, is trafficking prevention something that's becoming more widely discussed throughout your organization? Is it something that you feel the need to now highlight as an ongoing conversation?
[Wendy Guerrero] Yes, because we have started to recognize and see real cases that have impacted participants and community members that we work with. I can remember a particular case where a domestic worker was experiencing sexual trafficking, and happened to be a participant in one of the workshops on preventing sexual harassment’; and it was eye opening for her. This woman is also an immigrant, and she decided to open up to us; even though she had come to CGA to participate in a program to become a professional nanny. That is why it’s very important to provide this awareness, if somebody knows something, or has experienced something, they are able to say something and seek help.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] In addition to the actual amazing content and its importance, one of the things we really love is PACT’s peer education model. We started out where PACT staff would be leading these prevention workshops, and we've graduated more than 100 domestic workers through those classes; and we have developed a cohort of peer educators, which is really in line with our belief that workers themselves should be up in front of the room leading trainings and facilitating conversation, because they have the lived experience. So, we are deeply grateful that PACT shares that belief. I think it's not common. There's this sense that there's experts, and then there's people who are just there to be deposited information, let alone centering domestic workers to be trainers. I think that's had a material impact too, when workers are trained as facilitators. In the day they’re out in the parks, working as a nanny, talking to other nannies in the park, and in the library, and they pick up on things in conversations, they are now even more empowered and equipped to help spot issues and help connect other workers to resources and support. That peer education component is especially powerful in this partnership.
What were your initial reactions to the notification that you were nominated for this year's Freedom Award?
[Wendy Guerrero] I was honestly really surprised, but we are also honored. We have an amazing team, to be honest, our team is very shy and humble. When we were informed about the nomination, we all thought that it was really amazing. When you work with the community, you don’t do it for the accolades, you are doing so to help and empower the community. We are just grateful for the recognition and that it comes from another organization that works with us to serve the community. .
[Ben Fuller-Googins]
Exactly what Wendy said. I also had the opportunity to peruse the Freedom Awards webpage to learn more about the event, and I was like, oh my God, this is a big deal! Then, I thought, did they make a mistake? Because, as Wendy mentioned, we are a small crew here. We feel amazing about the work that we do, and most of our time is spent actually doing the work, not trying to publicize it or anything. So this is a huge honor, and we want to bring in the spirit of that domestic work that has been so often invisibleized, and that the fact that you all are giving us the platform to not only care about our work, but hopefully bring more light to the issues that domestic workers face. So a lot of surprise and gratitude on our end.
We're so happy to have you, and it was definitely not a mistake. For the 10-year anniversary, we knew that it'd have to be an organization that is not just a great partner of PACT, but who's been doing this work and needed it to be elevated.Outside of being presented the Freedom Award, what do you look forward to most about attending the gala this year?
[Wendy Guerrero] I think we are looking forward to connecting with other leaders and organizations that want to protect our communities. I also want to be more inspired, because I think every organization has a history behind their work that can inspire us. I truly want to learn more about other organizations and the work they are doing, and continue to build more partnerships like this that can impact a lot of communities. And of course, I am looking forward to people learning about domestic work, because we want our community’s needs to be seen.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] Just to build upon what Wendy has shared, we were reminiscing about how we initially got in contact with PACT. I think it was some resource fair, and it was a very unplanned encounter. Yet, now look at us years later. I'm sure that the room will be filled with so many potential connections and partnerships. I think that's gonna be one of our missions. In addition to being celebrated and joining the celebration, I think we really want to make connections and form partnerships, so who knows where they'll lead, but I think that’s important for the sake of bringing more advocacy and visibility to domestic workers.
Do you all have any final thoughts that you would like to share?
[Wendy Guerrero] First of all, thank you. We are very grateful. PACT and the nomination have made our work feel supported, so I want to thank you for that. We also want to thank you for creating a space and opportunity for people to learn more about domestic workers.
[Ben Fuller-Googins] Yes, we certainly have a lot of gratitude, and eagerness to see how this partnership continues evolving. We just had a graduation on Saturday of the last cohort, and I think even this week the new peer educators are starting their training. We're so grateful for this celebration. I think, if anything, it fortifies us to keep working together.