By Gwendolyn D. Richardson
YouthQuest Site Team Leader for Neithercut Community School
When I think of the community in which I grew up, I often remember the teachers, school administrators, and community members as “change agents”. You know… people that drove the kind of change we can believe in.
Change agents are people who strive daily to enhance or change the lives of people they encounter every day. My family (The Smiths) grew up in the Beecher Community School district over a span of three decades. Our parents moved there in 1968 with my oldest sister and brother. Our family of 10, (five girls, three boys, and of course dad and mom-Pastor and Mrs. Zack and Alverma Smith), began an awesome journey that linked our lives to some of the greatest change agents that our community can be proud of. My siblings and I would often discuss the school staff and their strict guidelines and rules. Now we know that they were building a foundation for us to grow and become contributing citizens of the communities in which we now live.
Our close knit community was an example of the old African proverb that “It takes a village” to raise a child. Some of the parents, teachers and supporters of “the village” seemed to be the meanest and most unfair people in the world. Of course, as life has gone on we realize that they were just a part of “Team Smith”. You see, my parents set our courses in life and surrounded us with people that they trusted would help guide us through life. They were preparing “Team Smith” to face life’s challenges that sometimes seem to be “Mission Impossible”.
As I went on to attend and graduate from Flint Northern High school in the late eighties, I met more change agents whose mission was to help mold young people into great leaders. While we strive for success and accomplishment, we must remember all the great people that helped us as we travelled along life’s road of trials and triumph, successes and failures.
In Flint today, we face the challenges of an unemployment rate of 12.4 percent*, the crime rates is at an all-time high, and there’s an elevated high school dropout level of 27 percent (Priority Children.org), and our community’s mission seems impossible. There is an urgent need for more change agents to answer the call to action. Our community will only become stronger as we influence the lives of the children and the families that we encounter daily. We must put aside our differences that may include our race, social-economic status, as well as levels of education and religion. We have made it through some rough times in our Flint history. And we can do it again. However, we must work together -- all races, cultures, creeds.
I salute all the change agents -- the teachers, community educators, principals, parents, neighborhoods, and community leaders that touched my life (and the lives of the rest of “Team Smith”) at Dailey Elementary School, Dolan Middle School, Beecher High School, as well as Flint Northern High School, McKinley and Longfellow Middle Schools, and Flint Southwestern Academy High School.
I encourage everyone at YouthQuest to take the time to thank those individuals that have enhanced or changed the direction of your lives. Pay it back, and pay it forward. I have the pleasure of paying it forward through my role as the YouthQuest Site Team Leader at Neithercut. And it’s very fulfilling. Please take the time to tell your story of how someone’s positive influence has changed your life for the better. It’s important.
*Source: Wall Street Journal.com
