Suzanne's Mom's Blog

In Baltimore, a former cop saw that, for poor children, a lack of options can create desperation. So she created a foundation to help kids envision a world of possibility — and to give them the tools to make dreams come true.

Theresa Vargas writes at the Washington Post, “During a drive earlier this week, Phyllis Ali asked the children in the car with her what they wanted to be when they grew up.

” ‘An astronaut,’ said one.

“ ‘A schoolteacher,’ said another.

“A boy replied that he hoped to be the owner of ‘a nice house.’

“ ‘I’m just glad they want to be something,’ Ali said, reflecting on that drive. ‘I’m just glad that none of them said, “I don’t know.” ‘ …

“The 68-year-old Baltimore native has spent much of her adult life working with the city’s children, and she has seen how people too often write off those who live on blocks with boarded-up buildings. She has also seen what is lost when they do.

“ ‘We can’t cast them away because of their environment,’ she said. ‘Don’t take their hope away. They are somebody. Just because they are here doesn’t mean they don’t have talents and hopes and futures. They are somebody.’

” ‘In the car with Ali that day were her 12-year-old grandson, whom she calls Scooter, and his younger siblings, ages 6, 7 and 8. They were headed to the Baltimore offices of the advertising agency TBC to join other children in the filming of a commercial.

“For hours on Monday, those children would wait for their names to be called, and then step under bright lights, look into a camera and offer an answer to that same question Ali had asked. …

“The children are participants in a program that is based in a Baltimore neighborhood where many families live below the poverty line. It’s also a place that people across the nation saw burn six years ago after a CVS was looted and torched during the uprising that followed Freddie Gray’s police-custody death.

“Debbie Ramsey, a former Baltimore police detective and the founder of the nonprofit Unified Efforts, said that about a week before that fire, she and others — with the blessing of community leaders — had picked the Penn-North neighborhood as the site for a program that would aim to help children thrive.

“ ‘When the uprising began, that did not scare us away,’ Ramsey told [me]. ‘I said, “Okay, that’s a confirmation. This is where we have to be.” ‘

“In the six years that have followed, Unified Efforts has worked in the neighborhood with more than 120 young people between the ages of 5 and 24. Initially, the organization planned to stop working with teenagers once they graduated high school, but the staff continued to hear from participants even after they got their diplomas. A college student in New York recently reached out to say that if she had a bike she could get to her classes more easily. The staff helped her get one. …

“It takes only spending a day in some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods to see that the organization is up against a mix of painful and complex challenges. In the year that followed Gray’s death, I spent months profiling a teenager who attended a Baltimore high school that was located next to a public-housing project. …

“The teenager I wrote about had spent three weeks alone in his home without hot water, a working stove or lights, after his mother was hospitalized. His school records showed he had struggled, ending one year with a 1.64 GPA, but I also witnessed him be the only student in his class to complete an assignment. It called for him to write a poem using a simile or metaphor.

‘The sun is the smile behind the night,’ his began.

“That tug-of-war between struggle and potential is something Ramsey knows well. She saw it as a police officer and she sees it now as the executive director of Unified Efforts. [The program] aims to ‘reduce summer and vital learning loss’ … offering children a safe haven to learn and exposing them to experiences they might not have otherwise. …

“Participants not only spent days learning from a violinist; they were handed their own violins to take home. They not only spent a summer with staff who made sure they were fed (and given clean clothes if they showed up in ones that were soiled in a way that would draw insults from their peers); they were given laptops to continue working at home. High school students are sent every year to a college prep writing workshop and given the chance to work with professionals to produce a magazine filled with their stories.

“ ‘I have something I call “the crayon model” and that is what really forms our foundation,’ Ramsey said. ‘When our kids are at a table and creating, we put no less than 300 crayons on the table. We do that to show what abundance looks like.’ “

More at the Post, here.