“7. Doing the Real Work” in “Faith Made Flesh”
7 DOING THE REAL WORK Community Reflection
Kenneth Duncan Jr.
I am a Bay Area/Oakland native. I attended Meritt College and Laney College, both community colleges, in Oakland. I then received a basketball scholarship and transferred to Wilberforce University, an historically Black college/university (HBCU) in Ohio where I received my bachelor’s degree in psychology.
I have a passion for helping youth become the best versions of themselves, even if no one else sees them in a positive light. After college I began working in the nonprofit world where my love and passion grew for mentoring and coaching our Black youth. In 2012, I became a program director for the Boys and Girls Clubs in Seavey Circle/New Helvetia public housing in Sacramento’s Upper Land Park and continue to support and mentor the youth I worked with then. I have had the blessing of mentoring youth from elementary school to their early years of college and being able to help them enroll in HBCUs. One of the young people I mentored since the fifth grade is now a freshman at Grambling University.
In Sacramento, I have had the pleasure and grace to serve on both sides of the river, something rarely done in this work. I first served as the lead staff member of a Community Incubator Lead (CIL) in Oak Park and am currently the lead CIL in Del Paso Heights. Through the BCLC, we have been able to reach youth who are system-impacted (children in child welfare and/or criminal justice system) and work with youth who are experiencing incarceration through programs such as Kings and Queens Rise, a basketball league for which I am currently the commissioner. I also cofounded a mentoring group called Black Boys Build (BBB). In this article, I focus on my impact and day-to-day interaction with “at-promise youth” (Mireles-Rios et. al 2020; Watson, 2012) and on the importance of trust and relationships in communities we serve.
Crisis response and intervention are huge parts of this work. Our goal is to help those who have suffered traumatic situations to feel somewhat whole again. If a child loses a parent or a mother loses a child, we try to provide whatever we can to begin the healing and to connect families to housing or even support them to make the rent during hard times. We know that the pain does not go away soon (if ever), but we try and help ease that pain in the most difficult times.
Kings and Queens Rise
I have the honor of serving as co-commissioner of the Kings and Queens Rise Basketball league for the past two years. The league was created after the death of Stephon Clark, who was killed in his grandmother’s back yard by the Sacramento police. It targets youth who normally do not have the opportunity to play on their school’s basketball team. This league reaches more than 600 youth across the city of Sacramento each season, giving them an opportunity to play organized, competitive basketball and meet youth from different communities.
Each neighborhood served by the BCLC—Meadowview, North Highlands, Arden Arcade, Del Paso Heights/North Sacramento, Oak Park, Fruitridge/Stockton, and Valley Hi—plus New Helvetia/Seavey Circle are in the league. I was the head coach for New Helvetia/Seavey Circle and we won the championship at the Golden 1 Center, home of the Sacramento Kings. This was an amazing experience for our youth and for me, especially because I had been working for more than seven years with some of the team members. Some of our youth had never been to a Kings game, let alone been invited to play a game on the Kings’ home court.
Black Boys Build
Black Boys Build is a support group for young men desiring community, mentorship, training, and guidance as they navigate through life. It provides a safe and nurturing environment for young men who may be involved in at-risk spaces, including probation, gang activity, or simply navigating reality as a young man of color. This group is facilitated primarily for Oak Park and Del Paso Heights youth but is open to young men throughout the city. We hold group sessions for twenty-five to thirty youth to encourage dialogue and healthy discussion. The young men learn and discuss topics concerning personal development, emotional management, relational equity, and more. Participants occasionally receive incentives for continuing to participate in sessions and recruiting others to attend with them. We look forward to growing with this group and to seeing how the young men will develop.
This work is my calling, not just my job. Every day, the young people teach me about life, persistence, and resistance. These skills are fundamental in sports, and are essential aspects of holistic youth development.
REFERENCES
- Mireles-Rios, Rebeca, Victor M. Rios, Trevor Auldridge-Reveles, Marilyn Monroy, and Isaac Castro. 2020. “I Was Pushed out of School: Social and Emotional Approaches to a Youth Promotion Program.” Journal of Leadership, Equity, and Research 6 no. 1: 1–21.
- Watson, Vajra. 2012. Learning to Liberate: Community-Based Solutions to the Crisis in Urban Education. New York: Routledge.
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