Just over two years after President Obama kicked off My Brother's Keeper, an effort to mentor young men of color, Ohio State University will begin studying how well the program works in central Ohio and how it can improve.
Columbus City Council member Shannon Hardin has worked to develop some city programs that target the goals of My Brother's Keeper. He says the city polled 500 young people in 2015 about what they felt the community needed - including mentors and job opportunities. A recent study done by the city looked at the local data behind those issues.
"What we're trying to do is to find evidence-based, data-driven solutions to issues that have plagued our community for many, many years," Hardin says.
Now that the city knows what challenges it has, Hardin says, the Ohio State review will help Columbus identify the best ways to go about addressing them.
"We mean this work of My Brother's Keeper," Hardin says. "We as a community need to say,' This is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to hold ourselves accountable.'"
Hardin talked to WOSU's Debbie Holmes about the program and where it's headed next.
Debbie Holmes: So the effort My Brother's Keeper is kind of being reassessed at this moment. You're still looking for what you eventually want to do.
Shannon Hardin: It's been a long process of engagement, making sure that we have been collecting information and really figuring out how we turn a ship that has not been created overnight. And so what we're trying to do is to find evidence-based, data-driven solutions to issues that have plagued our community for many, many years.
Debbie Holmes: What does that mean?
Shannon Hardin: One of the things that the Youth Perspective Report did in 2015 was established that young people in our community - again, we talked to 500 young men of color - they said that they needed mentors. Well, that's a great statement. But for us to really address that statement we need to actually know where we are as a community as it pertains to mentorship. Are we getting enough male mentors? Are there enough organizations that serve mentors? Are there barriers to why we can't get those mentors?
The research that we have funded in the last month or so, we'll work with Kirwan Institute [for the Study of Race and Ethnicity] to set those assessments, find out what the baseline data says about mentorship and then give us recommendations for, as a community, how we can solve that.
Debbie Holmes: So you want to know where you've been and where you're going?
Shannon Hardin: Exactly.
Debbie Holmes: Has there been some difficulty in getting enough mentors to be a part of this effort, when the young men are available? They wanted to partner up with mentors during school time, either at their lunch or study hall break.
Shannon Hardin: Well I think that, one, again, mentorship is just one piece of this work. And certainly there have been issues in the past with getting mentors, and so I know that's one of the things that we are working towards. Columbus City Schools, we partner with, they have a mentorship working group that is trying to find strategies to increase mentorship directly with the schools but also with all the organizations that do mentorship throughout the community. And so it's always about finding who can mentor, how they can mentor and what we can do as a community to encourage that.
Debbie Holmes: And what other areas, then, could be part of your effort?
Shannon Hardin: This will be a community collaborative approach. We need all hands on deck and so the City of Columbus is working with Franklin County, we're working with the private sector because, you know, one of the large things is, I mean, young men of color need mentors but they also need jobs and access to good jobs. So we want to make sure, one of the things that we have done is work with, you know, the labor unions to see about apprenticeship programs and how we can train for high quality jobs for these young men.
And so it's, again, finding the base: how many young men out there need, you know, quality jobs, and then matching that with what is available, but then creating strategies to increase those access points. Debbie Holmes: What do you think has been helpful so far?
Shannon Hardin: Well I think we could not have come up with the true areas of impact without talking to the young men. So that has been the most, I think, the most impactful thing that we have done so far. That was in 2015, we talked to the 500 men, so this specifically came from them.
When we rolled this out, I was so pleased. We had talked to these young men, they put together this report, we had the director of national director of My Brother's Keeper come in. He was glowing, with Senator Brown, he said we did a great job. But as soon as he got off the stage, he said, "Council member, this is a good report. They've identified the issues. But until you put data and metrics to how you're going to get to these things, it doesn't count."
And Mayor Ginther said it even more succinctly. He said, "If you don't measure it, you don't mean it." And so we mean this work of My Brother's Keeper. And so we now have to measure ourselves as a community to say, we said that mentorship is an issue and there's a possible opportunity for us to solve it. Now we as a community need to say, "and this is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to hold ourselves accountable."
