Three strikes: Crime, poverty and racism. These are some of the biggest barriers that our Ambassadors face on any given day in their lives. Our job is to not only give them the tools to face these obstacles, but the guidance to lead them through the obstacles. Youth today need to be taught about the social and emotional learning (SEL) capacities needed to survive life’s ups and downs and then they need programs to help them develop these capacities.

At L.E.A.D., our mission has been to emphasize the importance of SEL. I like to compare SELs to apps on a smartphone. A smartphone without apps is not very useful. It is the same for us—a leadership program without the proper components is not helpful. That is why we design our programming to help our Ambassadors train their decision making muscles – so they have the capacity to make the right decisions at the right time. Most of our Ambassadors live at or below the poverty level, so poor decision making in even the most minor decision in life could mean a major setback.

For the Ambassadors we serve who aren’t living at the financial poverty line, they still are struggling with being a teenager and the negative peer pressure that comes along with the territory—things like doing drugs, consuming alcohol and having sex.

One of the most valuable SEL capacities that our boys need the most is social connection. The Atlanta Public Schools’ (APS) mission is that every student will graduate ready for college, career and life through a caring culture of equity, trust and collaboration. It is designed to be a high-performing school district where students love to learn, educators love to inspire, families love to engage and the community trusts that the system works.

This sounds excellent, but without strong and reliable social connections, it can be nearly impossible for Black boys who live in poverty to get an education from failing schools to achieve their dreams. And to be clear, I’m not using failing schools as a total indictment on teachers. There are bad actors in every industry. There are far too many policies that set the stage for failing schools that need to be addressed firstly and immediately.

The importance of SEL is not exclusive to youth. As the chief visionary officer (CVO) of L.E.A.D., I am still working on SEL development.. The SEL capacity that I’m currently working on is social skills. Specifically, I am working at having and maintaining a sense of patience with others.

Both of my parents were young when I was born. They were hardworking and loving; however, we were financially poor and lived in a community with people struggling with the same fate. Eventually, we made it out of poverty and progressed to a working-class lifestyle before I graduated from high school.

Today, I enjoy a middle-class lifestyle and spend most of my days serving Black boys, who like me as a youth, are living at or below the poverty line.

I struggle with patience for our Ambassadors, because I see their potential and want to see their full development right now, which is unfair. I did not get to a place of maturation just because of hope and prayer. It took hard work and people being empathetic and patient with me. I know the bad decisions I’ve made in life and I want them to learn the bad lessons from me instead of having to experience the negative consequences themselves.

Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone. Empathy is suffering with someone because of a shared experience, so I have to remind myself that I am still becoming, and God allows me to coach others to become.

So as I work hard to change and grow, I challenge other youth development nonprofit leaders, to do the same. If an organization is not solving problems, it should join forces with an organization that is.

I am looking forward to the day that L.E.A.D. no longer needs to exist because sports are being used intentionally by APS – as co-curricular and not extracurricular – to develop educators, coaches, city council members, politicians, business owners, executives, pastors, etc. If that were happening, we would not exist. When it happens, we will stop existing.

Photo credit: Brad Jubin

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on the importance of giving today’s inner city youth the tools they need to be ready for college, career and life. Link for part 1

How L.E.A.D. is getting Black boys ready for life’s challenges

To help get youth ready for the road ahead, L.E.A.D. (Launch, Expose, Advise, Direct) partners with Atlanta Public Schools (APS) to recruit Ambassadors for our programs. With an army of great educators, facilities and state of the art technology, students in the inner-city communities of Atlanta have an awesome opportunity to enhance their educational experience.

At L.E.A.D., we have made it our mission to bolster the social and emotional learning (SEL) capacities that our youth inherently have at varying levels. To help do that, we teach SEL development by first speaking this language to our Ambassadors and Junior Ambassadors. This helps them understand what SEL is and why it is important.

To succeed, students must develop an awareness of SEL capacities before they can understand and develop them. When they understand it, they win.

That is why sports, and specifically baseball, is such a powerful vehicle for youth development. By way of preparation and competition, sports offer many opportunities to practice something and test it out through healthy stress and pressure.

When our metrics show that SEL development is low or not on track, we not only use the data to evaluate our youth, but also to evaluate our programming. The key is to assess whether we are the problem, and if we are, we must make the proper adjustments in our programming—just like in sports.

Likewise, if our assessment shows our Ambassadors are the issue, we continue to train and practice through leadership development. They must continue to get opportunities to fail because overcoming failures while under stress is how you develop skills.

We liken L.E.A.D to the Navy SEALs. Just like the highly trained and efficient SEALs, we have high standards, clear expectations and swift accountability. These are the standards we use when teaching SEL capacities. We remain intentional about our Ambassadors getting quality, frequent, consistent opportunities to develop SEL capacities.

Developing SEL capacities ensures our Ambassadors can win at the game of life. L.E.A.D. has defined three curveballs that threaten the success of our Ambassadors: crime, poverty and racism. Possessing a high potency of SEL capacities means they have what they need to make better decisions and to position themselves to have viable options for employment/career opportunities.

SEL capacities give our Ambassadors a level of positive consciousness that can hopefully help them defeat the negative threats and impulses that arise daily. The winner between positive consciousness, and negative threats and impulses depends upon which they feed the most. That is why we provide them with high doses of SEL building programming all year long, which has the potential to change them, their families, their communities, their city, our country and our world.

Photo credit: Chase Reichenbach