During the annual luncheon, the mentoring program collected donations for the elementary school youths who participate. Most of the donations were in the form of items such as spiral notebooks or folders; whiteboard easels and markers or erasers; giant Jenga Block sets; flashcards about Black history, U.S. presidents, states or countries; recess sports balls; lanyard or bead making sets; puzzles of U.S. maps and world maps, or Welwel Speed Cube sets (similar to Rubix cubes).
“We know this is a war, and we know this is far from over, and it’s going to take a village for all of us to help our youth,” Wallace said. “We’re going to continue to fight. We’re not going to give up on our kids ... We will never quit raising our youth to create a better community here in Springfield.”
In 2014, President Obama started the initiative and formation of the MBK Alliance. In 2016, the MB/SK Springfield chapter started with a partnership between the Springfield City School District and The Conscious Connect. Program support is provided by The Ohio State University Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, AmeriCorps Vista, the Obama Foundation, and a host of local Black men who serve as mentors.
The program started in one school, and is now in five of 10 elementaries including Lincoln, Perrin Woods, Kenwood, Fulton and Lagonda, all three middle schools including Schaefer, Roosevelt and Hayward, and Springfield High School.
Once the brothers program started to grow, Wallace said they saw a need for the sisters. Although the program started with young men and women of color, it’s now opened to all and the Springfield chapter “is very diverse of who we involve because we are all going through the same things.”
All 185 boys and 62 girls in the program meet weekly, do literacy workshops, talk about grades, current events, the climate of the school and what’s going on.
Once students are in the high school program, they learn real-life situations, how to coexist with each other and understand life consequences. For example, if they don’t show up to a meeting, kind of like a no-call, no-show at a job, they get suspended or written up.
“One of the things we’re really trying to tackle with our youth is gun violence and understanding the seriousness of it, and being able to control your anger or make decisions, and understanding when you type something on social media or you say things, it has different affects,” Wallace said.
For everything the program does, there’s an incentive to it such as field trips and the gear they wear. Students have to have at least a 3.0 GPA to wear the MB/SK letters.
“We’re not just giving them out. (It’s so) you understand what you’re doing, understand what you’re representing. We’re here to help them feel some self-worth and standing on their own two because we only get them for so long and then they got to go back into an environment where they got to know what they can rely on, and that’s their self confidence and what they’ve learned during the day,” Wallace said.
Wallace said he loves to see the growth in the youth, and understanding that if they’re doing the right thing they will continue to grow.
“There’re really working with each other, and you start to see kids who are struggling being conformable with discussing how uncomfortable or how they’re struggling, and that’s the first step. When you’re struggling with something ... you have to admit I am struggling with something in order for you to get better,” he said.
For more information, visit the program at https://theconsciousconnect.org/culture or on Facebook at “My Brothers Keeper, Springfield Oh.”
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