Project Link
Team members: Jay Anthony, Shelley Cagle, George Davis, III, Harry Dickinson, Matt Gilreath, Nona Henderson, Jeanmarie Tankersley
As W. Clement Stone famously said: “You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Are the things around you helping you towards success, or are they holding you back?
Many young men in our community do not have the luxury of choosing their environment. And for them, their surrounding influences are like a broken compass, steering these young lives in the wrong direction and away from realizing the greatness within them.
The Young Brothers Academy – YBA – works to directly impact local teens by educating, empowering, and exposing them to the world around them. Directors Justus Cox and Breylon Jones have developed a program for 8th through 12th graders in Greenville which includes group mentoring, tutoring, academic monitoring, college tours, youth conferences, and parent engagement. YBA currently has seventeen students enrolled, with a lengthy waiting list of others hoping to take part.
For some time, the YBA leadership has hoped to add a career mentoring and job shadowing component to the program, to expose these burgeoning leaders to the many careers and opportunities available to them, and to help to make key connections for the young men as they move towards the workforce. The Furman DLI members of Project Link worked with Mr. Cox and Mr. Jones to identify this need and then to craft and implement the program. YBA students (and some parents) were given the opportunity to identify fields of interest and were then matched against a group of volunteers assembled by Project Link members. Students are now beginning to engage with assigned volunteers in job shadowing and mentorship. The hope for the YBA and the DLI members is that Project Link will provide a self-sustaining platform to grow young minds, open doors for young leaders, and provide exposure for this wonderful organization.