About Us

Building Bridges Inc. is a non-profit service established to help previously incarcerated women through re-entry challenges, to strengthen their reunification with their families and the community. Our focus is on re-entry work to help a woman get in charge of her life, in recovery form trauma and dependency, and foresting healthy children and families with resources and community support. This is done through:Individual re-enty planning, job readiness skills training, educational training, life skills training (after incarceration), financial & family counseling and housing referrals.

Building Bridges Inc. provides services to women who have been incarcerated for one year or more. Our assessment services will start 1 to 3 months prior to release date. The program has four components each component has a specific focus and goal. Read more...

Building Bridges Founders

Gwen Empson MSW, CADC, LCDP,
President

Ms. Empson brings 30 years of diverse experience in the field of Human Services and substance abuse and criminal justice. Her work has mainly involved working with children, adolescents, female offenders and families.

She began her career in corrections in a community-based treatment program called Crest Outreach Center. During the past 15 years She has be working in the criminal justice system developing, implementing and managing a program called Key Village the first comprehensive residential Drug & Alcohol Program for female offenders at the Women’s Correctional Institution in Delaware. Where she currently provide individual as well as group supervision to staff in the areas of documentation, case management, meeting state licensure standards for drug and alcohol programs as well as daily case review meetings with staff and other medical and or mental health resources in the prison and in the community to provide a holistic approach to drug and alcohol treatment to all clients.

Gwen Empson has a specialty in prevention and family reunification and serves as family therapist to SODAT Delaware’s Family Reunification Program.

She received her MSW from Delaware State University with a focus on children and families. Gwen Empson is a certificated in Alcohol and Drug Addiction counseling and Licensed Chemical Dependency Professional.

Aleda M. Young MCC,
Vice President

Entering the United States Air Force in 1973, Aleda Young has served and worked as a Personnel Specialist during the Vietnam Era and was honorably discharged in 1981. Attending cosmetology school she obtained her license where she was self-employed, owning and operating two beauty shops from 1986 to 1996.

Aleda Young has over ten years experience working in the counseling field, she volunteered her services and facilitated a drug and alcohol support ministry at Victory Christian Fellowship Church since 1996 to the present. She was also employed by Correctional Medical Services (CMS) Nu Way program as a drug/alcohol counselor at South Wood State Prison in New Jersey from 1999 to 2000. She was then transferred to Delaware where she worked at Baylor Women's Correctional Institution as a Therapeutic Treatment Counselor from 2000 to 2002. Aleda also worked for CiviGenics at Baylor Women's Correctional Facility as a Counselor from 2000 to 2006.

She has earned a degree in Behavioral Science from Wilmington College in 2000, she went on to obtain her Master Degree in Community Counseling in 2003. While obtaining her Master Degree, she completed her internship at the Veteran Readjustment Counseling Center where she initiated and facilitated counseling groups for the wives and girlfriends of veterans dealing with drug/alcohol addiction related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD).