One-Time Gang Member Helps Vulnerable Girls Break Cycle of Violence

I was the middle of three sisters who were raised by a single mother in Brooklyn. My high school had a lot of violence, as did the neighborhood in which we lived. When I was 15, I was a member of the Deceptinettes, a gang of girls. At this time, I really was in need of help:

ISIS SAPP-GRANT Age: 34 First nonprofit job: Youth-development assistant, New York Division for Youth, Staten Island, N.Y. Current Job: Executive director, Youth Empowerment Mission, Brooklyn, N.Y.

I had been arrested for assault and robbery, and my boyfriend had been murdered. Fortunately a police officer assigned to the gangs unit and a couple of my teachers believed in me, and I managed to cut my ties to the gang and finish high school on time.

From there I went to Fisk University, in Nashville, and after two years transferred to Stony Brook University, on Long Island. I took a lot of classes in psychology and social work and ended up with a liberal-arts degree. My first job, while I was still in school, was working at New York’s detention facility for girls on Staten Island, and in most of those girls I saw a reflection of myself. I remember thinking that they were smart and resilient, but that they came from homes where there had been some sort of abuse, whether sexual, physical, or emotional. These girls were victims; they were acting out and ending up in the juvenile-justice system. Worse yet, the system would see several generations of women from the same family. The cycle just kept continuing.

After I left the detention facility I went to work at the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club for four years, which eventually led me to the work I’m doing now. At the same time I worked there, I was going to New York University for a master’s in social work — I knew that with that degree, I’d be taken more seriously. While at the club, I did a lot of youth-development work, helping children learn life skills, leadership development, and how to get into college. While this program worked with at-risk children, it wasn’t able to deal with high-risk kids. Or if these high-risk children actually made it into the program, they would get into so much trouble that they would be forced out. I also began doing a lot of speaking engagements on my own about the needs of high-risk children at community recreation centers, churches, and so forth.

After leaving the club, I spent some time working as an administrator for the 1199 SEIU League Grant Corporation, a huge union that represents people who work in hospitals. At the same time, I was still hearing from girls whom I’d met in the detention facility, and I realized they needed a place that would really help them turn their lives around after they were released back in the community.

So, in 1998, after leaving 1199, I established the Youth Empowerment Mission, which allowed me to continue motivating, training, and speaking to young people and communities that were affected by violence. I’d been doing this on my own since I was in college, but now I was able to do it full time.

Much of what I did, and what we still do at YEM today, was working with families and girls who were affected by gang violence, talking to community and church groups, counseling the children, and doing training for law enforcement. The first couple of months were just a continuation of visiting organizations. I even traveled as far as Switzerland to talk to delegates of the United Nations about the correlation between racial disparities, poverty, and violence, and spoke to students in the Harvard University School of Education. I talked about how children were crying out for help but faced many obstacles, such as not even having transportation to get to social services.

But I knew that workshops and presentations weren’t enough. I simply didn’t see anyone working with those high-risk girls who needed case management, educational services, or help dealing with a father who couldn’t keep his hands off them. These children certainly weren’t Girl Scouts — they had seen too much and endured too much — but they deserved a place where they can safely define who they are, and who they were to be, in this world.

In late 1999, with funding first from the New York Women’s Foundation and then with grants from the Robin Hood Foundation, Sister Fund, Pinkerton Foundation, and the Independent Community Trust, we were able to rent space in an empty school that was owned by the First AME Zion Church and establish the Blossom Program for girls from ages 12 to 18. Today I have a staff of five, and we run an after-school program that sees about 50 girls daily, and a smaller group on Saturdays. Many of them are trying to get out of the gangs they’re in, and many find their way to us by themselves. In addition, we’re on call seven days a week.

We knew that for this to work, the Blossom Program had to offer a single-sex environment and that when these children are here they will not have to deal with the issues that come with boys being present. In addition to doing a case assessment of, and advocating for, the children in the program, we have workshops on anger management, a group for girls who have been sexually abused, a leadership program, and a therapeutic writing workshop. If you come here, you will also see girls doing their homework or practicing yoga, taking step-dance, sewing, or cooking classes. We even have a woman who comes up from Miami every other week to teach photojournalism.

I’m always amazed at the resiliency of the girls who are part of our Blossom Program, just as I remember being amazed by the resiliency of the girls in the Staten Island facility. These children come here and their spirits are so broken that what they need is for someone to see the beauty that is in them. That’s our work, and it is work that is constantly in progress. No matter how difficult these children may seem at first, the potential is there. It is always there, and we are just about helping these girls see that potential and believe in it themselves.