Caitlin Brooking Is Refilling Jackson

As Executive Director of the Refill Jackson Initiative, Caitlin Brooking leads a West Jackson-based nonprofit that helps young adults (ages 18-24) gain the skills, confidence and support they need to find stable employment and build more productive lives. Founded in 2019, Refill Jackson runs a nine-week workforce development program that combines classroom instruction in soft skills like professional communication, teamwork and interviewing with hands-on job training and related social services. Participants can complete on-the-job training with local businesses while staff help address barriers like transportation, housing, access to healthcare and more. 

The organization has expanded its impact through Green Corps, a five-month AmeriCorps environmental workforce program. Green Corps members earn credentials such as OSHA-10, first aid, CPR, and water quality monitoring while completing neighborhood projects that include park cleanups, trail clearing, storm drain work and other revitalization efforts in partnership with other groups. 

Brooking has spent nearly 20 years of her life building a home and community in Mississippi’s capital city. “I wasn’t born in Jackson,” she says, “but I got here as soon as I could.”

She first came to Mississippi in 2007, coaxed by the wind from faraway Massachusetts. Brooking said she saw the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on TV and felt a calling to help. After moving south and getting her bearings, she helped establish an AmeriCorps program on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Her efforts helped countless families get the information, supplies and necessities they needed to survive and rebuild their homes. Brooking was impressed by the care and community she found in Mississippi. She had planned on staying on the coast for just a couple of years and then moving on to a graduate program to continue her studies. But when she got placed on a waiting list for the program, she had to swerve. She wisely chose to take a break from the Mississippi heat and headed up to Alaska for a long drive down the West Coast. However, fate would again intervene.

“While I was in California, I got a call from some contacts I’d made in Mississippi,” said Brooking. “They remembered me and offered me a Deputy Director position with Volunteer Mississippi, and I’ve called Jackson home ever since.”

Brooking said she plugged into the Jackson community by joining the local roller derby team of the time, the Magnolia Roller Vixens. From there, she made many friends and contacts, and found herself drawn to the creative, hands-on culture she noticed in Jackson, where starting a community initiative or movement is much more accessible and feasible.

“In cities like Boston, they already have so many groups already established,” Brooking observed. “They have a club or a resource for everything, and everything’s already been set up and you just join and that’s it.”

She was impressed by the way Jacksonians readily rolled up their sleeves anytime they saw a need; and she enjoyed helping out wherever she could. Today, in addition to overseeing the Refill Jackson Initiative’s nine-week workforce development program, Brooking is a frequent volunteer and active in her own neighborhood as well: Meadowbrook Hills in Ward 1.

“I really just love how often people in Jackson, if they want to see something happen, a couple of people get together and just do it,” she said. “This kind of DIY nature that seems very common in Jackson is something that I especially love about being here. And calling it home.”

Visit the Refill Jackson Initiative to learn more and find out how you can get involved as a volunteer.

Interested in strengthening your neighborhood? Join the Jackson Association of Neighborhoods and become part of a citywide network of residents, neighborhood associations, businesses and community partners working together to build stronger communities. JAN members receive access to leadership training, resources and toolkits, funding opportunities, networking, collaborative programs and other programs.