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| oSha Shireman |
During my time as a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville I have experienced numerous opportunities that have helped me to define and redefine my priorities and think about what I really want to do with my future. By far, one of the most rewarding experiences I have taken part in is an internship and subsequent fellowship at the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association. This experience has helped me develop key skills that allow me to start identifying overlap in different fields of study and to identify possibilities for collaboration. Working under Ben Reno-Weber, the director of the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association, has taught me that you can connect with people with similar goals and form partnerships virtually anywhere.
Today Chief Conrad, the chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department, led a local-leader seminar at the McConnell Center and spoke of the many challenges facing the LMPD and the Louisville community this year. He focused on the homicide rate and the number of robberies for 2012, but also addressed the collation of crime on the West side of town and the youth struggle there. He shared the LMPD’s Outreach programs and asked for ideas from our group as well.
This topic closely intersects with the Metro United Way Youth Summit that I did as part of my McConnell Scholar service hours. Metro United Way and the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association partnered to bring about 60 high school students from historically lower performing high schools in West Louisville together to talk about the problems facing their communities and develop service projects to address those problems. The students broke off into focus groups based upon their concerns and I ended up leading the Violence group. Around 15 students spoke about how violence affected their communities and shared personal stories on the topic as well.
Together, we developed an idea for a mentoring program that would allow high school students to both mentor and be mentored, instilling in them "big brother/big sister" values that would create an accountability within neighborhoods. The problem with the actual Big Brother/Big Sister program, the students expressed, was that they could have a mentor for a full year and then after that year they would disappear or be traded off—an unsustainable mentorship. These students wanted a mentor that would be around for several years, teaching them how to mentor at the same time as they were mentoring a younger student. However, they were concerned about finding enough mentors that were actually good role models and demographically relatable to students.
While Chief Conrad was discussing his outreach programs at the LMPD, it occurred to me that better partnerships should be made between police officers and youth of historically violent neighborhoods. Strong, African American police officers who work in these neighborhoods would benefit from visiting schools and connecting with the youth and the divide between these students and the sometimes distant or unapproachable police force would lessen.
oSha Shireman, of Meade County, Ky., is a junior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is studying political science.