“We need three things: partnership, relationship, and fellowship.”
Brody Rice’s words rang out with the cadence and conviction of an experienced minister at a recent Starkville Community Action and Advocacy meeting. His ready smile and neat khakis topped with a tucked-in shirt and sport coat completed the effect.
But Rice is actually a 15-year-old rising ninth-grader at Armstrong Junior High School.
He was one of 20 boys from Armstrong who traveled to the zoo in Memphis this month. Rice was impressed by the trip.
“They outdid themselves,” he said. “We got full VIP status from the time we got off the bus. We didn’t have to wait in line for anything.”
“Full VIP status” is not something to which the boys on the trip were necessarily accustomed. Many of them hadn’t been outside the area before, much less visited a zoo.
Students attended the trip free of charge, thanks to donations made by a variety of churches, businesses and individuals. A similar trip is already planned for female students on July 7.
Sammy Shumaker, the chief school resource officer for the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District, helped plan the outing.
“Three women from Arkansas stopped me as we left the zoo,” Shumaker recalled. “They said they had been watching the boys all day, from the time they got off the bus until the time they left. They were impressed by the kids and gave them many compliments.”
It was the best validation that Shumaker could have hoped for.
Partnership
The trip was part of a larger movement begun by Starkville law enforcement, ministers, community leaders and other citizens to create positive change for young people in the area.
The effort began toward the end of 2020, when Starkville Police Chief Mark Ballard put out an all-call in the city asking leaders to come together to help stem the rising tide of crimes — many of them gun related — in the city.
Starkville Community Church Pastor Joseph Horan was one who answered the call. He now helps lead the group.
“We started with a handful of leaders,” he said. “We are calling ourselves the One Step Initiative, the idea being that we can all take one step to change things for the better. We are leaders and members of the community that want to see change and build relationships.
They started meeting in February of 2021. They met weekly at first and then every other week.
“Now we meet once a month; we want this to be sustainable,” Horan said.
The group seeks to support families and young people through a variety of programs and from within several existing systems.
Ballard calls the approach “holistic.”
For its part, the police department is working both to improve living conditions in Starkville and to provide appropriate consequences for crimes committed by juveniles.
“We are working on code enforcement,” he said. “We see environments that would be shocking to the soul for most people. All we have to do is put a spotlight on it so we can create environments we would be proud of.”
To that end, Starkville’s Board of Aldermen recently voted to condemn and demolish three Brookville Garden apartment buildings.
Ballard is likewise working to secure room in a juvenile detention facility to accommodate serious juvenile offenders.
“When we have six or seven kids who are not properly addressed,” Ballard said. “It affects 70 to 80 other kids.”
The problem has been exacerbated by a lack of available space at nearby juvenile detention facilities.
“Lowndes County Juvenile Detention told us they didn’t have room at first. They can only accommodate six kids right now. We want to partner with other nearby counties to upgrade the facility to accommodate 20. The building can hold that many,” Ballard said.
“We might be able to save that child before they are tried as an adult at age 15,” he added.
Relationship
The group seeks to support youth in other ways as well. In addition to the zoo trip, members have launched a parenting support group for adults and a leadership skills class for young people. Others are working to create a boxing program. The group plans a mentoring program to begin this fall at Armstrong Junior High and Starkville High Schools.
Rev. Ronnie Tucker helps lead the parenting support group.
“We want to help parents with their skills. … It’s all about empowering parents,” Tucker said. “It’s open to anyone in town, any part of town, any religion, and any type of parent … foster parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents.”
The group meets every second and fourth Saturday of the month at Peter’s Rock Church from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Lunch and child care are provided. No registration is necessary, but interested parents can call Emerson Family School for more information.
The Leadership Academy, led by Lee Davenport, teaches life skills including how to resist peer pressure and how to manage anger. Davenport said the academy recently graduated its first two students.
“We had a student who saw some people nearby he’d had an altercation with,” Davenport said. “He knew there would be trouble, so he asked for security. We called Chief Ballard, and they came, so nothing happened. That’s one of the things we teach: ‘Call before you act.’”
That same idea is at play in the boxing program the group seeks to launch. It has received equipment and has been offered two locations. It is now working on securing insurance for the program.
“Our message is ‘Don’t be stupid. Think,’” Ballard said. “We hope boxing will bring us back to a true skill set, true strength.”
Fellowship
The heart of the group is the relationships that are forming across racial, socioeconomic and regional lines, Horan said.
“In my wildest dreams, the parts of our community that have been separated for so long would build trust and relationships because of this group,” he said.
The meetings are open to anyone. The next one is at 5:30 p.m. Monday, July 26, in the First Baptist Outreach Building at 210 S. Jackson St. Those interested in more information can contact Joseph Horan at [email protected] or Latasha Key at [email protected]
“We have systemic issues — crime, racism, economic problems,” Horan said. “We have to start talking about that.”
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