CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — Seated around cafeteria-style tables at Georgia Highlands College on a recent rainy Saturday were a group of young men—mostly dressed in dark suits—who were clinging onto the words of Dr. Tyrone Bledsoe, who was working the crowd like a preacher in the pulpit.
“Saving lives,” he tells them in the call-and-response tradition that has become a part of the Black church experience in the United States. “Salvaging dreams,” they respond in unison.
And then without much prompting, the young Black men (there were three Whites among the cohort) jumped from their seats and began to embrace each other, as they proclaimed their love for each other and vowed to be a source of support.
Long before the Obama administration launched “My Brother’s Keeper,” Bledsoe has been traversing the nation for the past 25 years, building a powerful network of the Student African American Brotherhood (SAAB) on college and university campuses and in middle and high schools in more than 39 states.
On some campuses, the initiative goes by another the name: Brother2Brother. Regardless, the objective is clear: to improve the success of young minority men.
“It’s good to see policy catch up with practice,” says Bledsoe, about Obama’s MBK efforts. “We have a national crisis.”
But at a time when scholars have argued that they know how to best improve the situation that confront young men of color, Bledsoe’s approach of actively engaging the men to be the spark to ignite their own change has caught the attention of national funders and policy makers who see the SAAB model as one that has staying power.
