Our foundation
In scripture, Ezra was a rebuilder, but not of walls. He led a people home from captivity and rebuilt what exile had taken from them: their identity, their practices, their sense of who they were. Scripture says he set his heart to study, to practice, and to teach. That is the pattern we follow. We do not just hand someone a resource. We teach, we walk with people, and we help them rebuild themselves.
Ezra is also the name of our founder’s firstborn son, a living declaration that joy comes in the morning and that new life follows even the hardest seasons. Friends of Ezra carries the weight of that name and makes it into something that serves others.
Grace, Ezra, and Elijah
Discernment
Grace was not just a loss. She was a season. A sacred, reshaping season that changed everything about how I hear, how I lead, and how I love.
Carrying Grace, her life, her passing, and everything that season brought me, taught me what it truly means to extend grace. To myself first. Then to others. The grace I now pour into this work, the patience with a woman who is not yet ready, the belief in an entrepreneur who has been told no too many times, the gentleness with a family in crisis, that grace has a name. And her name is Grace.
Through that season I also discovered a depth of discernment I did not know I carried. A quietness. A way of truly listening that became one of the most important gifts in my life, and one I lean on every single day in this work.
Grace taught me to be still enough to hear God. And everything built here was built from that stillness.
Rebuilding
Ezra came after Grace, bright, gifted, and proof that restoration is real. In scripture, Ezra means helper. God’s helper. He was a rebuilder who showed up in the middle of his people’s hardest season and helped them find their way home again. When our founder discovered this, she knew the nonprofit that had been on her heart for years had finally found its name. He is the living reminder that joy really does come in the morning.
Restore
Elijah came after the rebuilding had already begun, and his presence is its own kind of confirmation that the restoration was real. His name, My God is Yahweh, is a declaration that God is still present, still sovereign, still working even when we cannot see it. He is our joy, our fire, and the continued faithfulness that reminds us this work is not finished.
There is a moment in the prophet Elijah’s story that we come back to often. Worn down and emptied out, he lay under a broom tree and told God he was finished. God did not hand him an assignment. God sent rest. An angel touched him and said, arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you. That moment shapes how we serve. Some seasons call for rebuilding, some call for rising, and some simply call for care. Rest is not a pause from the work. Rest is the work.
If this resonates, reach out. You will probably find me in the community somewhere, sharing a hug and my testimony one on one. That is where the real conversation happens. That is heart of our work.
At Friends of Ezra, no one rebuilds alone.
Sherita Hayes, Founder
meet the founder
Wife. Mother. First Lady. Builder. Founder
Sherita serves alongside her husband Jaimal Hayes, Senior Pastor of Abner Baptist Church in Glen Allen, Virginia, where he is approaching his 25th year of faithful leadership. Their shared commitment to community and service is the foundation on which Friends of Ezra was built.
Sherita brings more than 27 years of financial services and leadership experience to the founding of Friends of Ezra. From managing multi-million dollar philanthropic grant portfolios, to teaching financial literacy to adults and students in classrooms, to building and leading corporate programs from the ground up, she has spent decades at the intersection of money, community, and the people the system too often overlooks.
Her faith is not separate from the work. It is the work.
WHERE THIS WORK IS GOING
Friends of Ezra was built on a simple belief. That change happens when friends lock arms and show up together. We are still early, still growing, and we are gathering our people. Come with us.
We are rooted in Richmond. We are rooted in faith. And we are walking toward exactly where God has been pointing us all along.