Mentoring program sets black youth on positive path
Founded 17 years ago, association has helped 4,000 Houston boys
LaDarius Jones earned a master’s degree in architecture and now serves as a project manager for a local construction company, but as a child growing up in northeast Houston he did not always see this as the direction his life would take.
The 27-year-old credits his success to a nonprofit, Positive Black Male Association, that has mentored about 4,000 African-American boys, elementary age to high school from neighborhoods across the Houston area.
The program, started 17 years ago by J.A. Rob Jr., was inspired by Rob’s own experience as a 7-year-old growing up in Montgomery, Ala. He looked up to his mentor, William “Kid” Franklin, like a father. Franklin founded the first African-American Boys Club in Montgomery.
“He believed in me, he trusted me,” said Rob. “He taught me to be strong. He told me to be honest in everything I did and everything I said.”
On a recent Tuesday evening, Rob stood in front
of a group of young boys at their biweekly leadership meeting at a community center in the Texas Medical Center, trying to instill the same lessons he was taught. He talks about respect, responsibility and honesty.
He tells them to tuck in their shirts and speak up when they are called on.
His boisterous voice rings throughout the room. “It’s your responsibility to show respect for yourself everywhere you tread,” he shouted.
Jones was one of Rob’s first proteges. He joined the program as an elementary school student at northeast’s then-named Houston Gardens Elementary School. He remembers mowing lawns on the weekends as part of the program’s community service. The boys also took a college trip to Atlanta.
He was busy, he said, which kept him away from friends who were involved in drugs and gangs. It motivated Jones to pursue college at Prairie View A&M University, where he got both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. “To this day, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. I’ve never joined a gang,” he said.
Dr. Rob
When Jones started, the program only had a few members. Now, the organization has grown to a robust one, where kids take college trips across the U.S., including to Harvard, and visit notable sites like the White House and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The boys grow up to be engineers, firefighters, police officers, military men.
Rob, who has a doctorate in social work, is affectionately called “Dr. Rob” by those in the program. His aim has not changed since he established the program. He wants to be a father figure to the kids in the program who don’t have one.
One of his rules: no cellphones. Another is that the boys must stand up when they speak, while Rob teaches from a chalkboard at the back of the room. Jones said it is not rare for Rob to show up at someone’s house if they stop attending the program.
“One of the best parts about this organization is that instead of running from where we’re from, they’re going to where we’re from,” Jones said. “The guys in this organization are like ‘I’m going to go back and try to take somebody with me.’”
Fighting stereotypes
Tim Lavallais, 15, described himself as a class clown before he joined the Positive Black Male Association. The Heights High School student said sometimes he would skip class.
“Living in a bad neighborhood, you don’t see too many good people around you,” said Lavallais “Dr. Rob took me in and he cared about me, he showed me that he wanted me in the program.”
He said his goal is to improve his B grades to A’s and continue to be a leader on both the track and football teams. As part of the program, Lavallais has traveled to California, Washington and visited colleges like the University of California at Los Angeles and Florida State.
Teenagers like Lavallais are the reason Rob started the program. He wanted to disprove stereotypes about African-American men being a part of gangs or always winding up in prison.
“That was not true about a lot of boys I knew. I could just not allow this thing to represent every young black male because a lot of us weren’t like that,” Rob said.