Building young leaders for life
Do you remember your ninth-grade self ? This year, as we’ve celebrated the 30th anniversary of Bridge Builders, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on that version of Jesseca McGhee. And to be honest, she was pretty naïve.
Like so many first-time Bridge Builders, I came to BRIDGES just to meet friends and have a fun experience. But I kept coming back the following years because it was about so much more than that: finding out who I was as a person, discovering my place in the world, understanding how that intersected with other people’s places, and learning how we could come together and literally do what BRIDGES was designed for: bridging gaps between our communities. Bridge Builders changed my life. That said, it wasn’t always in the ways I wanted or understood at the time. After a few years of experience in the program, I wanted nothing more than to serve on the Bridge Builders Leadership Board, a special internal council comprised of outstanding youth leaders. I was sure this was my path of destiny, and the opportunity meant the absolute world to me.
So when I wasn’t selected, I immediately processed it as rejection. The feelings of disappointment, confusion, and sadness overtook my teenage mind. If I wasn’t a Bridge Builders Leadership Board member, who was I?
Today I would tell any other student (and I encourage every single current Bridge Builder to apply) the same words that echoed in my head even as I was going through what I thought was the end of the world: Keep going.
That moment in my life made me uncomfortable. But it also gave me a chance to apply a lesson I’d learned in Bridge Builders: that discomfort— whether it comes from making a mistake, stepping outside your comfort zone, or challenging your own perceptions—is necessary in order to grow in leadership and as a person. Because being a leader means understanding the small losses you take don’t deter you from the future you’re meant to step into. They prepare you for it.
Those are lessons many people need a lifetime to learn, if ever. I was so lucky to learn them in my youth.
So I wasn’t deterred. The first thing I wanted to do when I came home after my first year at Spelman College was apply for an AmeriCorps summer facilitator with BRIDGES. And I not only earned that role, but served in it for the past two years, helping lead and inspire our newest classes of Bridge Builders.
Today I serve as a Youth Specialist for the City of Memphis Executive Division, working in the same South Memphis community centers I grew up in. Just as I did, these young people are growing up witnessing economic segregation, a plethora of social injustices, and, to put it plainly, the people in their community being treated unfairly. Our city is usually portrayed as one where the only way some residents will ever be successful is if they make it out.
But every week, I teach my students a little bit more about their home. Together we serve in the community, build life skills, and grow in our appreciation and affirmation of Memphis as a place where young people can make a difference and build a better future. These are all lessons I learned as a Bridge Builder, and now it’s my turn to pass them on.
As a Bridge Builders Alumni Award Recipient, I’m so grateful to Becky Wilson for capturing a vision so bright that it has changed the lives of so many individuals in 30 years. My hope is that this honor won’t just be a reflection of what I accomplished in the past, but will mark the beginning of what I will continue to do in Memphis well into the future.
Present-day Jesseca has a much better understanding of what it means to be a leader in her community. The humbling experiences I’ve had in leadership are scary, and they make you wonder if the path you want to take is truly the right one. But those same experiences put me where I was meant to be, turned me into who I was meant to become, and are continuously shaping who I am becoming.
Jesseca McGhee, Bridge Builders class of 2015, works as a Youth Specialist with the City of Memphis Executive Division. She also served two summers as an AmeriCorps service member at BRIDGES and is a graduate of Whitehaven High School.