HELPING SHAPE YOUNG PEOPLE’S LIVES
Mahal Burr gives students tools to work for social change
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Mahal Burr had trouble distinguishing right from left. Her mother put mismatched socks on her to help her learn.
Several years later, Burr, whose mother is white and father Filipino, started wearing different colored socks again for another reason.
“I didn’t want to be known as the white girl or the Chinese girl or the Filipina girl,” Burr said. “I wanted to choose my identity. So I became known as the mismatched socks girl.”
Today, Burr helps seemingly mismatched young people in Memphis choose their own identities and understand and value those of others.
Burr, 27, is community action coordinator for BRIDGES, a nonprofit youth leadership program that helps students build relationships and work for social change across racial, ethnic and income divides.
Burr was building bridges long before she began working for an organization named for them in a Mississippi River city defined by them.
Her given name is a sort of bridge. Mahal means “love” in Tagalog, a language spoken by her Filipino father. It’s also short for Mahalia, as in Mahalia Jackson, her Mississippiborn mother’s favorite gospel singer.
Burr’s families span two continents and multiple faiths, including Muslim, Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic and Quaker, as well as atheist and agnostic.
“I often see myself as a bridge,” Burr said. “I believe there is God, good and love in everyone.”
Everyone includes juveniles who are in jail awaiting trial on charges such as possession of drugs or firearms, assault, rape or murder.
At BRIDGES, Burr and her colleague, Evan Morrison, organized a new and unconventional leadership program called Incarcerated Youth Speaking Out for Change.
The program puts youth detainees in front of police officers, political leaders, church groups, students and others to help them understand the root and systemic causes of youth violence.
“We have to listen to the people who are experiencing those problems firsthand, and involve them in repairing the systems that failed them,” Burr said.
It’s a lesson she learned as a college intern working with struggling single mothers in Chicago, and as a college graduate working with abused teen mothers in Memphis.
“The solutions isn’t what we bring,” she said. “It’s what we find.”