Kevin looks at his son, a sixth grader, and his daughter, a tenth grader, and he sees what he was searching for years ago, stability, security and hope. He was arrested first at 13, and then throughout his teens with assault, robbery, gun, and other serious youth offense charges.
Kevin credits Youth Advocate Programs™, Inc. (YAP®)for getting him through those difficult times when he said he looked to the streets as an escape from the reality at home. YAP® is a national nonprofit celebrating 50 years of hiring and training neighborhood-based staff Advocates to deliver community-based youth and family wraparound services as an alternative to placing young people in trouble, crisis, or facing other complex challenges, in corrections or residential care facilities.
Kevin will share his story as a panelist at the 50th Anniversary At the 50th Anniversary YAP® Making Change Happen Summit in Philadelphia. YAP® is a national nonprofit that delivers community-based services as an alternative to incarcerating or placing youth in trouble or crisis, or who face other complex challenges in corrections or residential care facilities. YAP® also helps cities reduce neighborhood violence.
“I got locked up the first time at 13. And I kept getting arrested. Throughout those years, I was told by judges and so many people, ‘You’re not going to be nothing. You’ll be dead of in jail by 18,’ Kevin said. “You start embracing that. You fall victim to it. I had friends who went to the Army, and I went to jail.”
Kevin said his YAP® Advocate, Muka Salanko, helped him see the good in himself, that he didn’t have to take on the world on his own, that he was just a kid who deserved to have fun, and that the family circumstances he was trying to escape were not his fault. Those times when he got locked up, Muka would take his mother to visit him and when he got out, he stood by him, advocating for him, in the community, with his family, and in court.
“Muka and Craig [Jernigan] and the other people at YAP® helped me see that people do care about you. Advocates help you find your identity, someone to look up to tell you that you can do better, Kevin said. “Seeing those positive characteristics in myself, I didn’t give up; I was able to make the best of it and see light in a dark situation.”
Kevin said while receiving services from YAP®, he began going to school more regularly and getting into trouble less.
“My daughter is 15 and goes to the same school,” he said. “They say, ‘Your father had a hard time but in school, he was a good student.’”
Kevin said Muka’s support didn’t stop with helping him see and realize his intelligence.
“Mr. Salanko would come to east Baltimore and take me away, sit me down; show me different environments; check on my mental health. He’d ask me questions no one else would, like, ‘Did you eat today?’ To have an adult not judging you but here when no one was, that’s what they provided for me.”
Today, as an adult, Kevin works full-time at a hotel and has dreams of relaunching a business he started a few years ago with his sister. He also has a better relationship with his mother who he said struggled when he and his sister were children. He often tells his son and daughter about his troubled youth so that they understand that we are better than our worst mistakes.
With his YAP® Advocate’s support and pep talks, even after countless setbacks, as Kevin became an adult, he took steps to put his life on a positive path.
“I always remembered how he would talk to me and keep it real,” he said. “He helped me see and understand that I was more than the labels; I wasn’t a bad person; he was there with me in my day-to-day life.”
In addition to being present for his children, Kevin encourages neighborhood kids who he sees making harmful decisions to make better choices. And whenever possible, he and his kids volunteer to help people in need.
“Now I’m someone that people can call and ask for advice; I feel like everything happens for a purpose. God’s going to give his strongest warriors the strongest battles,” he said. “There’s something within you that comes up. You make a bad decision. It’s not hard for you to become a statistic. A lot of us were just kids trying to escape the reality of things going on in the household.”
Kevin said because of Muka, even through the darkest times, he saw a glimmer of hope that led to the future he’s experiencing today.
“I’m a full-time father; I have both of my kids; I was part of a negative statistic; now I’m part of a positive statistic,” he said.
With Muka as an example, Kevin takes every opportunity to move the guidance he got forward.
“Now it’s up to me to tell kids they don’t have to do go down that path, that It’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
Side Note: Theneighborhoodadvocate.org caught up with Muka, who is still a YAP® Advocate. He said he ran into Kevin a couple of years ago at the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles.
“I heard him call my name,” Muka said. “I I wondered, ‘Who’s this big guy? And then I recognized him. We hugged each other and talked. He showed me the picture of his kids and I was so happy.”
Muka has been a YAP® Advocate for 17 years.
“I did everything possible to make sure he was happy. I guess that was why he recognized me,“ he said.
Learn more about YAP® and the national nonprofit’s 50th anniversary at https://www.yapinc.org/50th.
