| Breaking Generational Curses - Winning with Advance Memphis
By Dr. Sybil C. Mitchell - The
Tri-State Defender - Wednesday, Thursday, August 31, 2006; Page 3A
For full article with pictures, click here
Aspiring and hopeful graduates of the Advance Memphis Jobs For Life (JFL) Program are sharing in the inspiring experience that Valerie and Crystal Johnson had last Friday.
Now that they have graduated from JFL, Valerie is on the road to enrolling in the University of Memphis, and her daughter, Crystal, a recent graduate of Booker T. Washington High School, plans on landing a great job.
Excelling in employment positions they never dreamed of, attending college where others never thought they would excel, and breaking free from a despairing dependency on welfare checks and food stamp subsidies, residents of the Cleaborn Home and Foote Home public housing communities are breaking out of the bounds of a dead-end future.
Scores of young people – and not-so-young people – have emerged from the outreach programs of Advance Memphis to lead productive, industrious lives after being touched by the life-changing reach of the Christian-based project.
Executive Director Steve Nash understands the enormity of the problem, but believes in Advance Memphis’ mission.
“The Lord is helping us to change lives in places where people don’t really have much to look forward to,” said Nash. “But when people are taught the important life skills they need, important changes occur in the way they do things. And it is just exciting to witness.”
The JFL Program is a three-week crash course in constructive and practical employment skills and personal work etiquette. JFL participants come away with an energetic zeal for work, having mastered everything from resumes to job interviews, answering a business phone and maintaining a proper workday attitude.
“We have seen our graduates go on to hold down jobs, many of whom have never even worked before,” said Rod Williams, JFL coordinator. “I want to show JFL participants that they can set a goal and achieve it. With God, all things are possible. And many of our participants have come through the program and totally changed their lives.”
Advance Memphis has worked to alleviate such social problmes as substance abuse, criminal and gang activity, high illegitimacy, illiteracy, and soaring dropout rates within their targeted areas of concentration.
The primary boundaries of the organization’s outreach extend on the south side from E.H. Crump Blvd., on the west from Mississippi Blvd. to Lauderdale, down Georgia to Fourth and Pontotoc; on the north side, Pontotoc to Walnut; and on the east side, Walnut down to Crump.
Advance Memphis has extended its reach over the past several years to College Park and members of the New Beginnings Community Church, the congregation that meets in the Advance Memphis structure on Crump Blvd.
The organization’s maxim, “Hope For Urban Community,” is further exemplified in its other outreach efforts that have made a marked difference in the lives of the families they serve.
Money Management and the IDA Program is an eight-week course that teaches good budgeting and money management skills, and the pitfalls to productive and profitable financial practices.
Students learn to save their money once they begin working and are schooled in the basics of banking, borrowing, and predatory lending.
Once they have successfully completed the course, graduates are eligible to open an Individual Development Account (IDA), a savings account which offers $2.00 for every $1,00 deposited into the account. The savings account is put toward the purchase of an automobile or a home, starting a small business, or earning a higher learning degree.
Nash and the Advance Memphis take a faith-based perspective on practical instruction, offering program participants the tools to change what they have, in times past, been unable to change.
LaTonya Farmer, group coordinator for the Streets of Union For Community Transformation (SOUCT), is a product of the Cleaborn and Foote Home Community and an integral part of Advance Memphis.
“Over the past 20 years, we have seen a lot of changes in our community,” said “Two-parent homes have become single-parent and welfare-dependent homes. Children not being nurtured at home began to seek support and attention from others, such as gang members and drug dealers.
“The pride that my community once had was gone, and I, myself, got caught up in this lifestyle,” Farmer admits. “Like a lot of us, I just felt hopelessness.”
But, she says, in August of 2005, she was introduced to the SOUCT program, a group which meets twice a months, every 2nd and 4th Tuesday, to discuss ways of improving the community.
Neighborhood clean-up and crime-watch projects were among the higher priority discussions.
“After attending several meetings, God opened the door for me to work with Advance Memphis, and I took leadership over the SOUCT Group. As God has helped me, I have been able to recruit more members into the group and establish a monthly clean-up schedule.”
Farmer has, during her brief employment at Advance Memphis, touched the lives of scores of youth and young adults she once “kicked it with.”
“I always want others to know what the Lord has done for me,” she said. “When they walk through our doors, there is no one judging who they are or what they have done. What God has done to turn my life around, He can do the same for them.”
SOUCT is planning a community fundraiser to help the three neighborhood schools purchase supplies: Booker T. Washington High, Georgia Preparatory Elementary, and Vance Middle Schools.
High school dropouts can also find help at Advance Memphis in the GED program.
“Hope For Urban Community,” indeed. Advance Memphis is changing the culture of public housing one life at a time.
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