cOMMUNITY

There is a beauty in inner city communities that sometimes gets overlooked. There is a uniqueness that provides excitement in the shadow of sometimes despair. The people who live in inner city communities may sometimes not have everything they need, but for the most part, they don’t feel sorry for themselves. On the contrary, there is a sense of excitement to live there. In my early years of walking the streets of Wilmington, I could feel a sense of beauty and pageantry that was kind of different in other areas.

African Americans live in a communal type atmosphere that was brought here from Africa. The term ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ meant just that. It takes neighbors, it takes grandparents, it takes a whole array of family and friends. That is exactly what exists in inner city neighborhoods. I could feel that when I first started walking the streets working with the children who resided there. And for me, it provided an excitement that drove me every day to want to go to work. There may not have been a whole lot of people who knew who I was, but after a while, I was the guy who worked with the kids, and I was accepted. I can't recall very many days when I worked directly in the community that I did not want to get up to go to work. I can't recall very many times when I took sick days. Not because I didn’t have any sick days, but because I was excited

to be there.

As I grew older and more experienced with what I did in the community, my love for the community grew. Although I was not consciously aware at the time, my credibility and

reputation was also growing. Through the love I had in the early years for running programs with credibility, a reciprocal degree of respect and acceptance had begun to come back towards me. A mutual love affair was beginning. Eventually there was no place in the city where I did not feel Importable walking or where I did not feel welcomed. There was no part of the city where I was afraid to go during the day or night.

What everyone wants is to feel safe and secure not just with our physical environment but in the people we come in contact with also. What I tried to provide was consistency with who I was. I tried to be the same person all the time. Because of the service I was providing in the community, I wanted not just the people of whom I was working with directly, plus their families to feel secure but I wanted the surrounding community to feel secure also. I was the guy working with children. The image I displayed had to be one that was defendable when I was not around or without me defending it ersonally. For the sake of the children I was serving, who I was had to be consistent.

cOMMUNITY

Big Brother

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