Staying out of trouble requires taking responsibility for your actions and keeping bad influences out of your life, speakers told a crowd of more than 100 Little Rock, Kansas City, Kan., and Monroe, La., students Saturday.
The Little Rock chapter of the Oakland, Calif.-based Our Kids program hosted two other other chapters Saturday in the Dunbar Middle School gym, where they heard from program Director Donald Northcross, Circuit Judge Leon Johnson and various alumni of the program.
Nearly 200 Little Rock students are signed up for the mentoring program, which targets black boys in middle school and high school, said Sgt. Willie Davis, a Little Rock police officer who works with the program. According to the program's website, the first Little Rock chapter was established in 2007. It is now offered in Central and Hall high schools and Dunbar and Forest Heights middle schools.
Davis said he's concerned about young people getting into legal trouble and urges adults to become mentors to help prevent violence and other issues.
"Right now in this city, we have 38 homicides," Davis told the crowd. "Thirty-four of them look like you and me."
Northcross told the crowd that students and mentors were all working together in the effort to reach their potential and said he wanted all black men to have opportunity.
"We are in trouble, and the thing about it is, everybody knows it but us," Northcross told the students. 'The good news is, we can change it."
Students heard the story of Cal Thomas and other alumni of the program who talked about how they have been successful growing up.
Thomas, 19, said that when he was a young teenager, he saw his father shoot another man in the head and kill him. He said most of his family believed he, too, would end up in jail and in trouble.
"All my family is like that. I wanted to make a difference," he said. "I wanted to be the one to break that chain."
Thomas had to let go of his best friend, who was getting into trouble, he said. Although Thomas also used to get in trouble as a child, he told the crowd he had to make the change.
Johnson urged the students to consider the consequences of their actions before doing them and said robbing someone of $10 or $20 for themselves or their family wasn't worth 10 to 40 years in the Arkansas Department of Correction.
"It's a simple thing to do what's right," he said. "I don't want to see you in court."
Brelon Rodgers, 18, said making the right choices is hard sometimes but said that for the seven years he's been in the program he's been able to talk to his mentors and relate to them when he's struggling.
In his second year in the program, Truth Russ, 12, said he's learned to be calm in situations that used to upset him, like when a friend might hit him over the head in the hallway. He also doesn't talk back to teachers like he used to.
"My attitude has gone down a lot from what it used to be," he said.
Evin McElway, 14, said he follows the program because his brother and his mentors have told him it will pay off in the end. Evin hopes to go to culinary school someday.
"It's keeping me in the right direction," he said.
Metro on 11/09/2014