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To do work of any nature and, especially, with a sense of its relevance to your community, you have to know and claim who you are. Thus, when I think about the roots of my philosophy toward community service, I return to my upbringing and the childhood memories created by that upbringing. Among my fondest, is the memory of my parents annually opening our home at Christmas time to every family in the neighborhood.
My neighborhood was comprised of a single street called Radcliffe Drive, and houses along the street were organized in a circle. The modern-day equivalent would be a gated community, except there were no gates or guards at the entrance of Radcliffe Drive. Anyone could enter the neighborhood from the main thoroughfare; and, whether you turned left or right, exiting the neighborhood returned you to the point of entry.
In preparing to open our home to every family that lived on Radcliffe Drive at Christmas time, my mother, Gwen, baked brownies and steamed hot chocolate. In alternating years, my father, Francis, and his friend, Harry Adofo Harmon, donned a Santa costume, danced through the front door of the house, as Teddy Vann’s “Santa Claus is a Black Man” blasted through the speakers, and handed presents to every child crowded into the spaces that comprised my childhood home’s kitchen, dining, and living rooms.
These indelibly marked moments of Christmas time and of family and neighborhood bonding are germinal to my understanding of how people relate to one another and how access to and distribution of resources, however limited, should define human relationships.
With resources allocated to my court through the State of Louisiana and Murphy Institute, I launched two court programs that serve my community. The first is The Literacy Clinic . This program supports court-involved adults who did not graduate high school in obtaining a high school graduate equivalent diploma. The Literacy Clinic also works with resource challenged K12 public schools in preparing K-2 grade students to achieve, sustain, and exceed grade-level reading.
The second court program is “Respect Is Just a Minimum.” This initiative provides a structured environment for youth who have had contact with the juvenile justice system, or who are at risk of having contact with the juvenile justice system to (re)group and (re)tool. The specific tools that the program provides these youth are conflict-resolving communication skills; empathic decision-making skills; health & wellness competency; and financial literacy. To learn more about “Respect Is Just a Minimum,” or to become involved, follow us on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM.