Cortney Holloway, one of the founders, says The Brotherhood Project is about creating a village around young men.
“Our purpose is to provide a safe,” Holloway said, ”faith-centered space where young black men can connect with positive male role models, learn life and leadership skills, and strengthen their walk with God.”
He says the organization was formed after a family conversation about yet another shooting in the community where teenagers got into trouble.
“My youngest son, who was 16 at the time,” Holloway said, "’Dad, we always have these conversations, and we come up with all these great ideas, but we never do anything.’ And so, God just kind of put it on my heart to reach out to my pastor and see if we could start something that would be based through our church.”
So, Holloway contacted Rev. Kenneth Ollie, who offered space at Wichita’s St. Andrew's Missionary Baptist Church. Co-founder Jack Spires, Holloway's longtime friend, also got involved, even speaking at one of their monthly meetings.
“I spoke about my life,” Spires said, “what I've been through, since I was a kid. It was hard. I grew up in the neighborhood in Primrose. It was an apartment complex. It was it was a tight knit group of people and we loved each other. And I'm just trying to bring that back to the communities that we are in, you know. Everyone looking out for each other, asking if anybody needs some help. That's all I talked about was my story of how I got here today.”
Essex Sims is slated as the next speaker. He's a violence prevention leader working with the Destination Innovation Organization, specifically Cure Violence ICT.
“I'm a site supervisor,” Sims said, “so what we do is we try to stay in tune with what's going on, what's going on in community, what's going on in the streets, and we try to leverage our relationships to get in the middle of those things to try to mediate situations before they happen. And if something has happened, then we try to step in to try to prevent any further retaliation.”
Connecting with people, Sims said, includes a recent intervention.
“So, a group of kids were planning a mall takeover,” Sims said, “and I guess this is something that was going on in other cities, and in some of the other cities, it actually led to violence. And so, we actually knew the kids, and you know the parents reached out to us.
“One of the people who worked for us, Elbert Costello, he got with the kids who were planning it, and he had to sit down with them, talk to them, and got them to deviate from the plan and to make another post saying that it was off. …It was just leveraging those relationships because we knew who the kids were so we were able to get to them and talk to them. [We] had to sit down with them. He took them to lunch and we still showed up just to make sure that nothing happened. We were at the mall, so thankfully nothing happened and nobody showed up.”
Sims said, as a speaker, he plans to be transparent and tell his story.
“My life, my testimony, where I've been, some of the challenges I faced in going to prison when I was 18 years old — a month shy from turning 19 — and how that that experience shaped me into the person I am,” Sims said, “and the work that I do now is because in our society and our community is something that's happening so often that's it's overlooked sometimes. But we are losing people to the system constantly, young people and it's just it's sad. And so, I wanted to get involved and to really try to use my story, my testimony to help somebody from making those same decisions to end up in a place like that.”
Holloway said the program is designed to support African American boys, but boys from any background can participate.
“We do say ages 12 to 19, but in a recent event,” Holloway said, “we were at the Atwater Center for their neighborhood night out, and a mother came up to us and said that her nine-year-old son was having a lot of problems in school, and she didn't know exactly what to do with him, and saying that he needed somebody that could be a role model for him. And so, we said, ‘You know what? He's younger than what we're asking but go ahead and bring him out.’”
And its aways good to be aware of possible influences.
“We recognize that our young men are growing up in a world where they're receiving messages from social media,” Holloway said, “So, our teens that are on social media, the music, the television, their peers, and so we want to make sure that they have an opportunity to hear from men who can sit down with them, who can talk with them, but who can also listen to them and challenge them and also encourage them.”
He emphasized the importance of positive male role models.
“This isn't just a program,” Holloway said, “where we bring young men into a room and then tell them what to do. We want to build relationships. We want them to know that there are men in their community who actually care about them and who are invested in their future. So, when we get together, we talk about things that matter to young men: confidence, identity, leadership, decision making, education, relationships. And what we found is that the boys they get really vulnerable, really participate well. It's a space that they're obviously longing for.”
Currently, there are fewer than 2% of Black male teachers in K-12 schools across the nation. Jack Spires says the program is a way to help boys build confidence and leadership skills.
“If a kid sees someone like them,” Spires said, “they have the confidence to say, ‘Hey, I can do it myself.’”
Sims said it's all about being intentional.
“I tell young people all the time, ‘You're not too young to start figuring it out. You know, whatever it is that you want to do, what you are dreaming about and what are the steps that you're taking to make those dreams come true?’”
Setting and achieving goals, and as Holloway said, seeing yourself differently.
“We want them to understand that they have a purpose,” Holloway said, that their decisions matter, and that leadership isn't about having a title. It's about how you live and how you impact other people. So that's why we call it the Brotherhood Project because it's about relationships, it's about accountability, encouragement, and showing our young men that they don't have to navigate life alone.”