- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Organizations supporting youth in Memphis, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by two CEOs of prominent organizations serving youth in Memphis, Dana Wilson is President, CEO of BRIDGES.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- And Metise Moore is President, CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

I wanted to have you all on for all kinds of reasons.

We'll talk about what your organizations do.

We'll talk about, you know, life for youth post-COVID, just the rise of truancy, the great work you've done.

And we're talking about alumni before we got started today, but also, and I said this to both of you before we started, your organizations are two organizations people, politicians, people, you know, advocates, so on, consistently and frequently point to as, hey, we've got trouble with youth, and, boy, look at what BRIDGES is doing.

Look at what the Boys & Girls Clubs are doing.

And so that intense pressure you might feel, we'll talk through that and talk through what's doable, what's not, and just kind of the state of things.

So, but first, let's start.

I'll start with you, Dana.

For those not familiar or fully familiar with what BRIDGES does, talk about what BRIDGES does?

- Well, we are a youth-serving organization here in Memphis.

We've been around for 102 years, starting as a mission of some downtown churches.

But we've been really focused on our current work for the last 36 years, and that's called our program called Bridge Builders.

And it's focused on serving youth in 6th through 12th grade.

And our real focus is bringing youth together from different backgrounds so that they can have, you know, diverse friendships, build relationships, learn to really know who they are in context of a city that is full of people from different neighborhoods, different racial backgrounds, different religious backgrounds.

Those young people come together.

They build friendships, and they develop leadership skills through experiential learning.

So our methodology is not like the classroom.

You're never sitting at a desk, and someone's lecturing.

It's all about challenges that groups are thrown into together.

Sometimes they fail at a challenge.

Sometimes they succeed at a challenge.

But we always sit down in a circle afterwards, and we think about what we just did and what we learned and how we can apply that moving forward.

And then we do it all again.

And then the last part of what we really do is about civic engagement.

So we want young people to understand the challenges we face as a city and see their role in being a part of solutions and really empowering young people to feel a sense of responsibility and ownership, whether that's through being an entrepreneur and being creative or being a servant or being a teacher or social worker or being a community leader.

We want students to understand our city and to be committed to making it better together.

- And Metise, same question to you.

I think people think they know what the Boys & Girls Club do, and they might be right, but they also may have an understanding of Boys & Girls Club from a long time ago.

So talk about the organization does now.

- Absolutely.

Boys & Girls Club has been in existence for 160 years across the nation, and here in the Memphis area, I think it's 53 years that they've been since they transitioned from Boys Club to Boys & Girls Club in 2000.

So we service a little over 7,000 as the last count last week.

Organization for kids ranging from elementary ages all the way up through high school.

And with our technical training center, we actually offer programs for workforce readiness up to the age of 22.

So right now we have four pillars within our organization, workforce readiness, life skills, health and wellness, and also, of course, the educational components for certifications and also, you know, school readiness, academic success, absenteeism drop, tutorials, solutions, and also community engagement pieces.

So, extremely proud of what we're doing now.

We have a STEM option that we've offered to the kids as well as soft skills programming there.

So we're trying to amplify those two aspects to help kids' really readiness for their 21st century skillsets going into the corporate environment or at least get those certifications, get that first step into, you know, work environment and also school.

So, very proud of what we're doing and where things are going there.

- All right, let me bring in Bill.

- And you've been there seven months?

- Seven months as of today.

- Tell us how you came to Boys & Girls Club.

- Well, actually, I come from high tech, been an infrastructure asset manager for about 25 years.

So I dealt with all levels of government, state, local, federal, as well as DOD, DOE, and DOI.

So it's really around CapEx and OpEx, helping cities and municipalities and states kind of understand their capital expenditure processes and OpEx.

So I got kind of, you know, burnt out on the corporate environment, you know, after a while.

I was senior vice president for Siemens, all of North America, Canada, and also South America.

So when this opportunity came about, Boys & Girls Club, the corporate office came and called, and I was like, you know what?

I've always been into coaching back home in Denver, coached for about 25 years, high school as well as AAU.

And I'm like, man, it was such a joy to be around kids and mentoring them and pushing them to learn life skills and move to that next aspect of their life.

I thought I could replicate that and bring some of that successes here to town, so.

- So coming from the corporate environment into a place where you're dealing with people who are just entering the workforce, or you're making them ready for it, what kind of hits you coming through the door at Boys & Girls Clubs about the state of how ready to work, so to speak, young people are in Memphis?

- Yeah, the biggest thing I think we have to really close is that 21st century skillset.

You know, with automation of AI and data analytics and machine learning and processing, folks is gonna see and understand that a lot of those day-to-day operational jobs are gonna close and constrict.

But there's gonna be major, major opportunities on the backend in terms of operating logistics program and engineering, coding, all those components with that, those aspects of those careers.

What we really wanna teach is the soft skills piece for the kids, right?

How to interview, how to prep, how to put a cover letter together, what situational questions you're gonna do to amplify your experiences and what you bring to the table for a potential employer.

So that's what we really want to teach and show them that process.

Well, it was really great.

A couple months ago we had Coca-Cola Consolidated in town.

Really went through a process with our kids at the TTC about who they are, what they are, and then put 'em through mock interviews.

So that was absolutely fantastic to see.

And the kids were like, "Oh, I kind of understand how this process works," so that's what you're talking about.

- Dana, in terms of civic engagement at BRIDGES, I'm interested how young people, because it's what I cover.

I'm interested in kind of what the view there is of politics.

I mean, do you use the word P?

Do you use the P word with them when you talk to them about civic engagement?

- I mean, I think not as much as we...

I mean, we try not to, and I don't think of it... You know, we're a nonprofit, so we're not gonna be in on partisan politics, but I think the issues that affect young people are issues that come up in our politics.

And so I think some of the best work that we can do with young people is helping them get really proximate to people who are working on solutions in the community and working on the issues.

And then, you know, the politics kind of melt away.

And one of the things I really like when young people talk about the things that affect them and what they wanna see in terms of education, in terms of job readiness, in terms of access to STEM and, you know, career preparation or even, you know, juvenile justice reform, any of those things, when young people come, and they talk about it, and they are personally affected by it, it kind of cuts through the politics 'cause, you know, you can't stand on a political platform when the young person who is affected by that issue is in front of you telling you what they need.

- Right.

- And so I think that's where our work gets really powerful, is when young people can learn about the issues, learn about the solutions, and then be advocates for themselves.

- Well, and you also bring together children, teenagers, from different schools.

And the facts of life in Memphis are that a lot of our schools are racially segregated, not by law any longer, but that's the way things have worked out.

So what happens when you get students from different schools that may be majority white or majority black in the same room, and they start talking about those issues?

- Yeah, I mean, I think that it's always interesting and in a really good way.

And I'd say, you know, a lot of the private schools that were traditionally, you know, mostly white or all white are more diverse than they used to be.

But I think there are the schools where the schools that are socially and economically disadvantaged and isolated are almost all black.

And so it's really about where you live and your access to resources that dictates your educational environment.

And I think that has to be, like, named.

And then one of the things I think is really powerful that we see at BRIDGES, so our curriculum is scaffolded through.

So the seventh graders don't do the same thing as 12th graders.

Our 9th and 10th curriculum is really focused on educational justice and questions about education so that students can really think about what is their high school journey going to look like.

And we wanna have that conversation in ninth and 10th grade, when they still have time to, you know, make a plan for how they're going to show up in high school.

And those are the most interesting conversations because you have students in very different schools talking about what they have access to, what their options are, and you see the inequities really come up.

And then the students together can start to name, "Well, this is actually really important to my success.

"Having opportunities to do these things is really important to me."

And it helps them sort of clarify and name what all young people need, and that's another opportunity for us to lift up their voices and cut through some politics.

- So at some point, does BRIDGES perhaps influence how segregated or how not segregated schools are?

I mean, BRIDGES has been around for a while.

- Yeah, I mean, so I think that we are a youth leadership development organization, so most of the youth that we're training are developing their leadership skills, and we're like helping them be leaders in their communities, neighborhoods, churches.

And then we also have initiatives that young people lead.

And so we have a new initiative that started in 2020 called the Youth Action Center.

And our goal there is really to partner with other entities in the community and help students be a part of those roundtable leadership discussions about how we address concerns in our community.

And I do think in that way, young people are influencing policy, and our goal is that, you know, if you are, if we have a really vibrant city that has a huge youth population, we have the largest youth population in the state of Tennessee, if we are gonna have a vibrant city, then when we are making decisions that affect the lives of young people, we probably should have young people at the table helping make those decisions.

And so the Youth Action Center is the place where we're really working to make that happen.

An example is that we partner with the Shelby County Government, and the Shelby County Youth Council is housed at BRIDGES.

So we get to use our expertise and leadership development, helping young people, you know, learn how to analyze a policy, think about what is local government, what's the difference between city government and county government, these questions that most adults can't answer.

And so students from various districts are meeting with their county commissioners.

They're meeting with the mayor's office.

They're setting priorities together, and they're hopefully, I mean, at best, they are providing youth-driven research and perspective to the decisions that leaders are making.

And at best they could be influencing those decisions.

And I think we want... We need a community that embraces young people and does more of that.

And I think sometimes we problematize young people, and we see, you know, because of statistics of crime or something like that, we start to really say we need to fix the youth problem in Memphis.

And at BRIDGES and probably at Boys & Girls Club too, we get to see young people on their very best days.

And so we realize that young people are an asset to the community and that they should be our partners in building the city that we want.

- I'll kind of pick up on that.

I think you mentioned Boys & Girls Club, about 7,000 kids that you'll reach every year.

- Correct.

- BRIDGES reaches- - About 5,000.

- I'll go... How many do you wanna reach?

How many do you need to reach?

- Well, considering the age group that we service, like Dana mentioned, it's roughly around 100,000 kids from all the different age groups within Shelby County.

We wanna reach as much as possible, right?

My growth goal is to, by the end of this year, at least to be around that 8,000 number and then by the end of 2025 be somewhere in between 10,000 to 12,000.

- And that takes money and staff.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And a lot more, but at its core, money and staff.

- Absolutely.

- I'm gonna come to Dana with the same questions, but how do you reach kids, I mean, who you're not reaching now?

Just logistically, it's a massive city.

We talked about pockets of poverty.

We talk about parents who maybe don't have cars or who are working all the time.

We don't have good public transit.

I mean, how do you reach all the kids you wanna reach as you go from 7,000 to 8,000, 10,000, or even beyond when it gets harder and harder to do so, I assume?

- Absolutely, no, that's a great question, though.

I've been talking with some community stakeholders, Mayor Young, Memphis Parks and Rec.

There's an existing infrastructure that's already there that reaches every pocket, every avenue in the city.

And those are the community centers, right?

Those community centers are placed strategically around the city in every location where the youth are and to be served.

So we wanna see if we can partner with the city and kind of expand some of those Boys & Girls Club in-the-box solutions around the city in those areas.

- And you do some work, and we'll come to Dana, but you do some amount of work in schools.

You're kind of hosted in various schools around town.

Is that right?

- Correct.

It's called Club in a Box.

We have 12 high schools right now existing with the Club in a Box services.

So what we do, we provide curriculum and after-school activities and also meal planning after school at the high schools that we're in currently.

- Same question to you.

You're reaching 5,000 now.

What would you like to reach?

What do you feel like you need to reach?

And again, how do you bring people together across the city with all the logistical and financial limitations that you're up against?

- I mean, I think it's very similar.

So I think one of the things that is a challenge for BRIDGES is, you know, as an organization, that we are diverse by design.

So it is about bringing young people together.

The geography of our city and the lack of public transportation and the, you know, increased fuel costs, the, you know, increased car costs, like, all of those things are affecting families, also the perception of safety moving across the city.

I mean, I think that those are real challenges, and so we have a new strategic plan we are starting to work through that is, you know, that we have, you know, set to try to address some of those challenges.

And that's like looking at programming and satellites locations.

And so I love the idea of reactivating our infrastructure in, you know, whether it's libraries and community centers in neighborhoods.

And BRIDGES, actually, I think it was kind of happening when I first got to BRIDGES in 2008.

There was an initiative that BRIDGES was participating in with the city to try and reopen a bunch of the community centers that were closed.

And they just have limited hours, limited funds, limited staffing structures, and we need to break that down and bring more resources to the table.

And I think we have the will and the leadership in Mayor Young to address that.

And I think we just have to keep it as a priority for our city and not let more short-term things become our priority because I think investing in young people is a longer-term bet, but it's a worthwhile one.

- Yeah, about 10 minutes, Bill.

- Metise, when Jim Strickland was mayor, he put a great deal of emphasis on the Boys & Girls Club centers at the high schools as a direct, and as he saw it, an immediate response to some of the violence that was happening in our city.

If I hear what you're saying correctly, though, you're not looking to just divert attention for several hours after school.

Boys & Girls Clubs are specific programs for the long haul, right?

- Correct, correct.

Actually, we're open until eight o'clock at our community, or excuse me, our traditional sites.

Of course, high school sites, you gotta leave around 5, 5:30-ish because of school regulations there.

But we're there all the way through as well as the intention that Mayor Strickland had with the partnership with the City of Memphis was to go to some of those areas of high schools that had absenteeism issues, academic issues, behavioral issues, food desert issues, all those components which we now address at those locations.

So we have 12 locations now.

I actually met with Dr. Feagins earlier this week to talk about some expansion opportunities there within the high schools.

A lot of people don't know that we provide OSHA certifications, which were some requirements for the high school students to have that.

And we actually absorbed that cost and provided those solutions there.

So this is one thing that we kind of talked about with the school board as well.

So we would love to expand.

I know when I first came on board, within my first month or two, we talked with the school board then.

And it's like, "We have 38 high schools here in the city.

"We would love for you guys to expand as much as possible strategically within those 38 schools."

But it comes down to budget, funding, staffing.

Those types of things you gotta address.

So we would love to get into many places and opportunities we can.

- Right.

And in addition to the workforce certification, workforce preparedness, is there a college/higher education element to Boys & Girls Club as well?

- Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

You know, one size doesn't fit all when it comes to our youth, but there is opportunities for our kids to go the academic route, the college route, you know, workforce certification route.

Even some of the certifications you need now to get into like the STEM areas and some of the backend engineering stuff is a certification you could walk into seamlessly.

So we try to address as many opportunities, military as well.

Also, we've been working with Memphis Police Department to talk about some recruiting for some of the sheriff's department as well as some of the police department once those kids get of age.

So there's a lot of different avenues.

There's no way to, one way, they call it, to skin the cat.

But there's plenty of ways for the kids to really figure out what's honing in on their future, what they're invested in, what they like, what interest components that they have, so.

- I'd like to talk to each of you about what you see in terms of the impact that violence in our culture, violence in our city, has on the kids who come through your doors when they first come through the doors.

Compared to when we were all growing up, what strikes you about the kids who come to your places today?

- I can speak to that.

I guess it's the level of violence and especially the age of the violence that's coming from some of these, from our youth.

You know, when I was growing up, you know, you always heard around the 16, 17, 18-year-old kids kind of doing some knucklehead stuff around town.

But now you're seeing 10, 11, 12-year-olds that are participating in high-level crimes of robbery, shootings, you know, all types of different components, you know, house entries.

For me, that's really touching because we're talking kids that are just fifth, sixth, seventh grade, and they should be worried about, hey, what's going on on TV?

Can I play with my gaming system?

Or what sports I'm gonna be involved in?

Or you know, the nice cute boy or girl at school or whatever, and they're participating in high-level crime activities.

So that's what's shocking, is the level of crime and also the age.

- Dana?

- Yeah, last summer, we, some staff and students from BRIDGES, did a research project.

The district attorneys across the US have an essay writing contest called Do the Write Thing.

And so middle school students write essays, and the prompt was around how violence affects your life, which is a pretty intense prompt.

So we don't know... Like some of the things that students wrote, we don't verify whether they wrote, what they wrote is true or not.

But I mean, I think if you're writing, you're talking about your life and what you know.

And we actually made, well, our team made a request to actually take the data, the essays just from the Memphis area and that we locally coded and really looked at that data and created a report of the data of what middle school students were saying about the effects of violence on their lives.

So that report came out, and there was actually a data walk that lived at the DA's Office in the lobby so that the district attorneys and people visiting could see how violence is affecting middle school students in Memphis.

And I think the themes that we heard, you know, is that it's deeply affecting young people, and, you know, there's just a level of trauma and fear and isolation and sometimes hopelessness that they're grappling with because of violence and that almost every young person that wrote had someone in their family or immediate circle that was affected by violence, and that is traumatic in itself.

And the essay also asked for students to propose solutions.

And a lot of the solutions that students proposed spanned the gamut from like, we need, you know, more policing to things like, we need community centers that are open so young people can go and be together and be safe and have places to go.

So, you know, I think that what I see in this is that we often think of young people as participants in things, but they're actually victims of this, and they're deeply affected by it as well.

- Just a couple minutes left.

We could do a whole show on this one question, but when you talk about those young people, particularly, I mean, it's just heartbreaking, the five, sixth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth graders, what is your take?

What is the draw to crime?

And what do you see is an effective counter-draw to that life?

- Yeah, well, I think the effect, the immediate effect is desperation, right?

There's no...

It's limited.

I'm not gonna say no.

It's limited opportunities and resources.

And when you come from an impoverished area, background, household, and you know, your stomach is growling in the middle of the day or the night, you get desperate, and you start looking for things to help support your mom or your family or whatever the case may be, to circumvent that immediate, you know, need.

So I think that's, you know, really the bare bones of where some of this activity's coming from and also the recruitment aspect, right?

Kids are kids.

They're gonna find things to do, whether it be positive or negative, right?

And we have to be kind of that insert piece to say, hey, there is a better way.

There is a better side to what you're doing.

Also, there is opportunities, resources, and needs out there that we can assist you with.

So I think the backside of that is marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing.

Be out in these areas, in these neighborhoods and letting folks know that there are particular resources and engagement pieces to help.

- Just with a few seconds left, Dana, after 16 years at BRIDGES and what, five plus years as CEO, you're leaving at the end of this year.

What's next for you, and what's next for BRIDGES?

- Well, exciting things, I'm sure, are next for BRIDGES.

We recently got a million dollar grant from MacKenzie Scott's Yield Giving Fund, so we're really excited about that.

And we've put that aside to really fund our strategic initiatives over the next few years.

And there's a search underway for the next CEO, and I'm excited about that, and I'm really committed to BRIDGES through the end of the year, and I don't have any determined plans for the future.

- Okay, well, good luck with that.

Thank you both.

Thanks for the work you do.

Thank you, Bill.

Coming up in the next few weeks, Judge Tarik Sugarmon, Superintendent Marie Feagins, other superintendents from the suburbs.

All that's over the next few weeks.

If you missed any of the show, go to wkno.org or download the podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much.

We'll see you next week.

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