Coalition For Improved Education In South Shore

Okay. Well, tell us about YAM [Youth Action Ministry, Evanston, Illinois]; that seems like a major act--volunteer activity (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Well, Youth Action Ministry, like I said, when I got involved with it at the time, there was like--it was started at Second Baptist Church [Evanston, Illinois]; there was like five students in it. Dr. [Hycel B.] Taylor, one Sunday, announced that he was lookin' for somebody to take over his youth program. My wife [Toni Rodgers] and I--we came and we met with him and we told him that our goal was to make the youth program not a sec--not a church program, but make it community-based program, and he asked what did we mean by that, we said that we think that it's very important that we open up our doors not only to kids of the church, but kids--not only of Evanston [Illinois], but kids of the community. So we came up with this crazy idea; we said, "Why don't we do college trips during the summer?" And he goes, "Well, there's not that many people doing college trips; college trips are"--Dr. Taylor was sayin' at the time, were like really, really expensive. And we said, "Well, how about we have our kids raise money? Now, we'll show the kids how to do like car washes, we'll show 'em how to sell t-shirts, how to sell barbeque--things that we learned in Detroit [Michigan] in Lansing [Michigan]." And we took the kids to Michigan State University [East Lansing, Michigan] the very first year that we started the Youth Action Ministry. When we got back from there, we decided that what we wanted to do was--because of--my wife is a former educator and bein' one of the financial aid officers and directors at Michigan State University, we wanted to have the kids fill out a application, so we started tutoring kids, we started doing mentoring and things like that, and from there we decided that we wanted to focus--because we were dealin' with African American kids, we wanted to focus on, on African American colleges. So we took the kids--the next time we took the kids, we took the kids to Nashville, Tennessee. We took 'em to Fisk [University, Nashville, Tennessee], we took 'em to Meharry Medical School [sic. Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee], we took 'em to the colleges in the Tennessee area, the black colleges, and that's basically how YAM got started. And since then, we have had, I would say anywhere from three to four thousand kids have actually gone through my program. Ninety-five percent of the kids that go through my program actually graduate from college, and we do--and the program is basically--there's no money that exchange--all the adults who are in the program basically volunteer their services. The kids run the program; they are the ones who make the decisions about what they wanna do, how they wanna do it; we teach the kids everything from junior toast master, public speaking, to investments, to--they even do things with senior citizens as for doin' grocery shoppin' for 'em and things like that, but our main goal is gettin' kids off the street and givin' 'em some basis for education--for them to improve themselves. We have been in Essence magazine, we have recognized--recognized [HistoryMaker] Susan Taylor, [HistoryMaker] Senator Carol Moseley Braun has recognized us, we've been recognized by the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], we've been recognized by [HistoryMaker Reverend] Jesse [L.] Jackson, [HistoryMaker] Jesse Jackson, Jr., we've been recognized by several different people. I mean we've been--every year we're getting different awards. We just got--we were just in Washington, D.C. just recently where we went to Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s office. The kids got a chance to go to the White House [Washington, D.C.], so we take--I mean this year we're takin' the kids--this spring we're takin' the kids to visit black colleges in Atlanta [Georgia]; in the summer we're takin' the kids to visit colleges in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. So, and like I said, we've been doin' this for about twenty-five years in this dynamic. It's dynamic; the kids love it.$$Now, you keep a full-time job; you're not--you don't do this for a living; this is volunteer (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) No, this is volunteer; this is, this is volunteer. I'm an engineer full-time; I'm a full-time engineer.$$All right, so do you have to write all the proposals for this organization, or--$$Actually, we have a board of directors that--actually we have a, a young lady name Jan Roy [ph.], who write proposals like for the school district; she's on the board of directors so she help us write grant proposals and things like that. My wife and I do a lotta the writing, a lotta the counseling, but we have a, a very dynamic board, and we try to select board members. Vickie Pasley, who's a well-known attorney here in Chicago [Illinois], she's our legal advisor; Bill Jackson [ph.] who's also the church's attorney, is also our legal advisor. Dr. Sandra Shelton who's a professor of accounting at DePaul University [Chicago, Illinois] is our financial advisor, so we have people--and all these people volunteer their services; everybody volunteer their services just--Judge Mary Maxwell Thomas is on our board of directors. She's been our counselor and do things for us, so we have different people, and the thing what makes it is that it's just constantly growing, it's constantly growing.$Okay. Now, in terms of the specific self-esteem issues that--I mean this is 2004. Do African American kids have different self-esteem issues than other kids in the city, you think?$$I think that--racism is, to me, is always a big thing that you gotta deal with, you know. You have to, you have to tell kids that you gonna be black all your life; no matter what you say, no matter what you do, you're gonna have to get around that. I think one of the things that--I have an adopted daughter that we adopted when she was very, very young, and she was a child who had some physical problems, medical problems. It's a thing that we--that you gotta teach kids is that you have to love yourself, pride--take some pride in yourself so--and I think African American kids sometimes feel as though that the system is always gonna be against them, so I think that yes, there are some issues that black kids deal with that other kids do not have to deal with, and I think that racism is something that, even though people keep sayin' that it doesn't exist, I--to me, I think it does exist, and I think a lotta the problems that black kids face is because of the racism in America.