Creating My Destiny - Ashley Wants to Save the World

I have always been drawn to stories of injustice and people who take a stand for the things they believe and people who are in need. Besides a time in 4th grade when my best friend Jenny and I planned on being fashion designers together, I have always imagined spending my life helping people. I pictured myself feeding the starving, building homes for those without shelter, even helping people escape persecution. I was greatly impacted by stories of slavery, war, genocide, poverty . . . I loved movies and books that told an inspiring story of one person making a difference somehow.

I was never sure, though, exactly how I wanted to help people. I’ve always loved history and culture and for a while I thought I wanted to be an anthropologist. I pictured living with people groups very different from my own . . . I was a junior in college, an Anthropology major and just beginning to understand that I didn’t so much want to study culture as I wanted to do work to better people’s lives, when I found out I was pregnant. I was thrown for such a loop with the pregnancy that I dropped out and went to work full-time.

We got married, had a second child, and I spent several years working office jobs that I was good at and enjoyed. At this point in my life I didn’t feel a strong need to have a career – having a job I enjoyed that helped to support my family was enough. At work I participated in things like my company’s Diversity Team, United Way campaign and community-service projects. I remember thinking, “I wish this was my job” and being surprised when my company created a Community Relations position to manage all of these initiatives. I’d never known that jobs like this existed.

My supervisors saw my energy and abilities and encouraged me to go back to school, but I just wasn’t ready. The only programs that fit around my work schedule focused on Business and I wasn’t interested in investing my time that way. I put it off and put it off.

After 4 years of marriage, my husband and I decided to move to Chicago, where he’s from. I was able to transfer within my company to a different division, where I was supposed to do work similar to my previous position, but for a different “customer”. Unfortunately, I was very unhappy. The supportive, community-minded atmosphere of the division I’d left wasn’t present in my new division. I didn’t feel good about the product we were promoting and didn’t fit in with my workaholic co-workers. I spent most of my day dreaming of being at home with my kids or doing something – anything – that would give me a sense of having done GOOD for the world.

I eventually left and began looking for work in the non-profit field. I now work at a graduate school that places a heavy emphasis on community, service and diversity. Ding ding ding! I love our mission, my co-workers and my small part in helping to make the world a better place.

I think it was being around people who were furthering their education, having a third child (hello exponential cost of living increase!) and realizing that there were all kinds of degrees that I never knew existed, that finally prompted me to start looking at going back to school. I had heard of Social Justice programs and that seemed right up my alley, but the only ones I could find wouldn’t fit with my work schedule. Luckily, I stumbled upon a Social Justice certificate offered through the seminary of North Park University. North Park is a small, Christian liberal arts school which places a heavy emphasis on service. I found that they offered a Non-Profit Management degree AND it was available through their School of Adult Learning. Classes are offered nights, weekends and online – perfect for me!

I was intimidated at the thought of applying for admission, but right from the start, everyone at NPU welcomed me and helped me get past my fears. Before I knew it, I’d been admitted to the program, transferred my credits from my first college go-round, gotten a financial aid package, set up my tuition reimbursement agreement and registered for my first classes!

I’ve now been in school since the Fall of 2008 and I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. I still have a year or more of courses (I’m taking things slow, just one course at a time) but I know I’ll be graduating before I know it. The program I’m in is so perfect for what I want to do, because the thing is, I still don’t know exactly what I want to do. My program is exposing me to organizations and people that inspire me and I'm gaining skills and knowledge that I can apply to ANY non-profit I work for. I’m learning about fundraising, advocacy, boards, grants, foundations, volunteer management and more. My classmates and instructors have such great insight and experience to share and our classes are highly interactive. No boring 400-student lectures!

I expect that the work I’ll be doing in 20 years will probably be something I had no idea I’d end up with, but I believe this education will help me no matter where I go. I’m really excited for my future – I finally feel as though I’ve found my specific way to help people. I won’t be roaming the world looking for people to save, at least not until my kids are grown. But I can help people here in my community, and I can help others go out into the world and make a difference.

I have to select an area Non-Profit to do my final project on for my current class. I have to meet with their executive director (or someone in a similar position), interview them, tour their location, and then present my project to the class. Tomorrow we have to come to class with 3 possibilities. I chose:

~ Crossroads which is based in the South suburbs and does anti-racism training for organizations.

~ Wings which provides shelter, education, guidance & support to homeless/abused women & children (I knew of them because a thrift store near my house where I shop sometimes is a Wings thrift store – all money supports the org)

~ Roseland Community “Good News” Daycare which has an awesome story . . . it’s run by a lady who was a pregnant teen years ago . . . she began providing childcare for local teens who were likely to drop out of school. She provided free care, food & diapers if the mom couldn’t pay. The daycare has grown into a great organization. My friend Alicia told me about her a while ago.



In related news, last week I sent an email to Leonard Pitts from the Miami Herald (a columnist I’ve read for years), nominating the Roseland Daycare as an organization he should profile for his “What Works” column. What Works is a look at programs around the U.S. that are doing good things for children in need, specifically Black kids. Of course I didn’t bother to read the DATES of the articles that highlighted great organizations, so I didn’t realize that he ran this series of columns a couple years ago (doh!) & they’re just posted as archives.

Anyway – if you’re interested in reading about some great nation-wide organizations that are doing great things, google Leonard Pitts Miami Herald and start reading. You may eventually be asked to create an account to continue reading but it’s free and took me about 30 seconds to do it. You have to opt IN for any newsletters/emails so don’t worry about getting spammed by creating an account.

Here is the text from his final article on the series, dated July 7, 2008. (Also - the Harlem Children's Zone has connections in both curriculum & training to the people where I work who are running an elementary school here on Chicago's West Side, the Garfield Park Preparatory Academy).



We Know What Works – Now Let’s Do It by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

This will be the last What Works column.

I reserve the right to occasionally report on any program I run across that shows results in saving the lives and futures of African-American kids. But this is the last in the series I started 19 months ago to spotlight such programs.

Let me begin by thanking you for your overwhelming response to my request for nominations, and to thank everyone from every program who allowed me to peek behind the scenes. From the Harlem Children's Zone in New York to SEI (Self-Enhancement, Inc.) in Portland, Ore., I have been privileged and uplifted to see dedicated people doing amazing work.

I am often asked whether I've found common denominators in all these successful programs, anything we can use in helping kids at risk. The short answer is, yes. You want to know what works?

Longer school days and longer school years work. Giving principals the power to hire good teachers and fire bad ones works. High expectations work. Giving a teacher freedom to hug a child who needs hugging works. Parental involvement works. Counseling for troubled students and families works. Consistency of effort works. Incentives work. Field trips that expose kids to possibilities you can't see from their broken neighborhoods, work.

Indeed, the most important thing I've learned is that none of this is rocket science. We already know what works. What we lack is the will to do it. Instead, we have a hit-and-miss patchwork of programs achieving stellar results out on the fringes of the larger, failing, system. Why are they the exception and not the rule?

If we know what works, why don't we simply do it?

Nineteen months ago when I started, I asked Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone why anyone should pay to help him help poor kids in crumbling neighborhoods. He told me, "Someone's yelling at me because I'm spending $3,500 a year on 'Alfred.' Alfred is 8. OK, Alfred turns 18. No one thinks anything about locking him up for 10 years at $60,000 a year."

Amen. Forget the notion of a moral obligation to uplift failing children. Consider the math instead. If that investment of $3,500 per annum creates a functioning adult who pays taxes and otherwise contributes to the system, why would we pass that up in favor of creating, 10 years later, an adult who drains the system to the tune of $60,000 a year for his incarceration alone, to say nothing of the other costs he foists upon society?

How does that make sense? Nineteen months later, I have yet to find a good answer.

Instead, I find passivity. Save The Children, Marvin Gaye exhorted 27 years ago. But we are losing the children in obscene numbers. Losing them to jails, losing them to graves, losing them to illiteracy, teen parenthood, and other dead-ends and cul-de-sacs of life. But I have yet to hear America -- or even African America -- scream about it. Does no one else see a crisis here?

"I don't think that in America, especially in black America, we can arrest this problem unless we understand the urgency of it, " says Tony Hopson, Sr., founder of SEI. "When I say urgency, I'm talking 9/11 urgency, I'm talking Hurricane Katrina urgency, things that stop a nation. I don't think in black America this is urgent enough. Kids are dying every single day. I don't see where the NAACP, the Urban League, the Black Caucus, have decided that the fact that black boys are being locked up at alarming rates, [means] we need to stop the nation and have a discussion about how we're going to eradicate that as a problem. It has not become urgent enough. If black America don't see it as urgent enough, how dare us think white America is going to think it's urgent enough?"

In other words, stand up. Get angry. Stop accepting what is clearly unacceptable. I'll bet you that works, too.