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Community Organizer

Interviews

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"What I do and why it's important to me is really simple," says community organizer Yusef Bunchy Shakur. "Growing up in Detroit in the area that I grew up in, I wasn't exposed to individuals who considered themselves community organizers working on behalf of bettering the community, bettering people, promoting peace, promoting love.

"I grew up experiencing the opposite side of it, which was a criminal environment -- drugs, prostitution, gangs," Shakur adds. "So those things inspired me to ultimately be a gang member, to co-found a gang, which also landed me in prison where I went through a whole re-educational process and [formed] a relationship with my father.

"That motivated me to do for my community something I wish that someone had done for me growing up."

Shakur spent nine years of his youth in prison. He turned his life around to become a community organizer, business owner, mentor and motivational speaker. He has also written a memoir called The Window 2 My Soul: My Transformation From a Zone 8 Thug to a Father and Freedom Fighter.

Shakur co-founded The Urban Network, a bookstore and resource center located in his home neighborhood in Detroit.

Shakur believes that his tough childhood helps him relate to the people he's now trying to help.

"Most definitely, particularly when you're looking at the issues of social de-integration, dropouts and things of that nature, which is definitely impacting the bottom of the totem pole, [which] I've experienced at multiple levels," says Shakur. "My mother was a dropout, my mother was a teen mother abandoned by her father -- you name it and I've been through the gamut of it."

For the last four years Shakur has been organizing something called Restoring the Neighbor Back to the 'Hood; Back to School Supply Family Fun Day. At the event, hundreds of book bags filled with school supplies and school clothes are given to Detroit children.

"That's my [highest] priority event," says Shakur. "We do it right in the heart of my neighborhood -- I grew up there. I raise the money, I do community fundraisers, [I get] community donations, I use my so-called leverage of social prestige and get others -- politicians and celebrities -- involved in a grassroots initiative. That's my proudest moment."

As the lead organizer for a community alliance, Laura Jeffreys helps organize faith organizations, unions, professional associations, small-business and other community groups to improve social conditions in her city.

Jeffreys' experience of growing up on social assistance with a single parent inspired her to work with children and youth in various capacities, such as recreational and academic support programs. She later took a job helping kids in the inner city, where there's a lot of poverty and crime.

"I was working for a really small not-for-profit, and as tends to happen in small not-for-profits, I was scooped from the front lines from the work that I liked doing and brought into management," says Jeffreys.

"So at 21, I became the executive director for that organization and that meant working with the board, community collaboration, and hiring and firing of staff and the whole nine yards. I didn't like it -- what I liked doing was working with the kids."

Jeffreys then worked for an independent media outlet.

"I thought that working for an independent media outlet would be a way to make real change, but advocacy work I found really lackluster," says Jeffreys.

"I was very frustrated with it. I was speaking for people rather than speaking with them... So I went from service delivery to advocacy work, and then I needed something different again and I had some criteria that if I was going to stay in the not-for-profit sector, I needed to work with competent people on issues I could win and I wanted direct mentorship..."

Jeffreys started out as a volunteer leader and then went to a 10-day, regional organizers training session. She progressed from the job title Associate Organizer to current job title as Lead Organizer.

"I've been on a pretty steep learning curve since I came into organizing," says Jeffreys.

For example, Jeffreys didn't grow up with a religious background so she didn't really have a framework to understand the religious organizations she was dealing with. Also, she had never belonged to a union and learned about union history and union politics.

That kind of knowledge is all part of understanding the people and organizations within a community. This is essential to get them to work together.

"Relationship building is the number one [skill], truly," says Jeffreys. "Your ability to foster trust and accountability with people that you meet -- your ability to not just build relationships, but to really listen and discern interests of other people."

Community organizer Diane Doyle echoes these comments. She's the director of youth programs at a neighborhood house. She helps promote community involvement through various services, programs and special events.

"We all have our own experiences, and then we interact with people with their experiences," says Doyle. "So the whole quality of clarifying, asking questions, listening, being kind of inquisitive, [is] one of the components that I would put at the higher level. Being curious about another person.

"Asking, 'What was it like for you when you were growing up in this city, or this country, or on the farm, or when you were a minority, or you were a majority?' If you're able to ask those questions, it can really bring down a lot of barriers."