Tony Di Giacomo:

Today’s expert interview. We’re excited to welcome is Barbara King. Barbara is an educator of 20 years and founder and CEO of the Ossining, New York based non-profit Take Trips MES, which works to reduce the recidivism rate through providing incarcerated youth of color with vital aftercare services upon release. We’ll discuss her organization’s important mission and programs, how people across sectors can get involved and more. Hi, I’m Dr. Tony Di Giacomo from Novella Prep and this is A Novel Take. Barbara, it’s great to have you with us today. Hello.

Barbara King:

Hey, how are you? Thank you for having me. Good to talk to you once again.

Tony Di Giacomo:

You’re welcome. So love to hear a little bit more about your nonprofit Take Trips MES and the population you’re serving and feel welcome to share a little bit about your background as well.

Barbara King:

So I’ve been an educator for over 20 years, the last 10 or so years, I’ve been educating youth of color in the incarceration system. And so what I was seeing was a large return rate of its students. And I just kind of want to take it back a little bit to a personal reason why this hit me hard because my younger brother who was part of the Mississippi prison system for most of his adult life and upon his exit in 2015, I don’t know if everyone knows that the Mississippi prison system, they require you to pay a parole fee. And so when he came out, he couldn’t find a job because of limited education, untreated trauma from his childhood. So a month before he got off of paper, as they say in Mississippi, he committed suicide. That hit very hard because I did a lot to try to save him and help him.

Barbara King:

And a month he had came to my area and visit me at home. And so to go through that and then working with that population and to see them return, it was not only professional and business. It was personal for me. So I would talk to my students and I would say, why do you keep coming back? What was the problem? And they would tell me, you know what, Ms. King, we’re just not getting what we need once we are released from the system. And so I made it my mission, Tony, to say, I have to do more. And so that’s where Take Trips, MES and MES is mentally, emotionally and spiritually because we have to do that. We’re quick to take a trip to go and have a good time, but we’re not quick enough to take trips to heal within ourselves and heal our inner being. So I think that taking trips mentally, emotionally, and spiritually is a way to start to get to talk about things that we don’t talk about. Acknowledged the mental abuses that we’ve suffered, acknowledged the emotional, and I think that the youth it’s needed. And so that was my mission. And that was my personal mission to also make this happen.

Tony Di Giacomo:

Thank you so much for sharing that obviously we’re so heartbroken over what happened to your brother and perhaps it can catalyze some different changes that can happen in the education system. Policy-wise as well as in looking at the various ways in which students need support in and outside of the classroom, what services does your organization provide students? And typically what age group do you work with?

Barbara King:

We work with the age group of 14 to 24. And the services that we’re providing is mentoring. Because again, Tony, we think about a baby and you know, you have to hold the baby’s hand as the baby grows. You know, they crawl and walk. So we want our mentors to be that for these youth coming in, because a lot of the youth that are coming out of the system they’re in gangs, they can’t go to different areas because that area is the opposite gang. So we want to kind of give them something different, show them something different. And so we were offering mentoring, we’re offering counseling because again, a lot of them don’t want to talk to just anyone. So we want to make sure that they feel comfortable without counselors, social workers. We want to make sure that they’re, you know, if we need a mental health counselor, we have that job readiness we’re providing also, we want to give them parental support. Because again, even though they’re 16 and 17, most of these kids have their own kids or even they have issues with their parents. And so we want to provide them those services.

Tony Di Giacomo:

That’s wonderful. There’s a lot in the news and media and in research about how to break the cycle of poverty across all racial, cultural lines in general. But in particular, from your organization’s perspective, what are some things that you’re seeing your organization do that is helping break that cycle? And do you have like a story you could share without naming obviously the student’s name?

Barbara King:

Yeah, we definitely do. I mentor a student, a young woman of color, I believe she’s 23. She has three children and she lost custody of all three children. And so we’ve been working to have her attend the mentoring and make sure she’s going to counseling, make sure that she’s going to have visits with her children so she can work on getting her children back. So these are things that we have to make sure that we’re doing because we don’t want the cycle to continue because she’s in a facility now, her children and it’s sort of a generational sort of a curse. So we want to stop.

Tony Di Giacomo:

Thank you. So for some parents throughout the tri-state area who don’t have a close connection or physical proximity to students who are experiencing the kind of life you describe, what are ways people can provide support to your organization as they about whether it be service or donations or voting, whatever it may be like, what are some of the different tools you see that could be productive to support your children that you serve?

Barbara King:

Well, I think big time, you know, supporting to make sure that we can keep these services going because these services are needed. The other is to provide somewhere. And that’s why I love this area because a lot of the students that we deal with, they don’t get to experience an area like, you know, the Ossining, New York area. They don’t get to experience that they’re inner city, youth. And so we want to broaden their horizon. We want them to see things different because you know, there’s a whole world outside of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and they haven’t experienced it. And so we want to give them that experience. How can we do that by donating to these services, making sure that take trips has grants because this is our future, the youth of our future. So we have to invest in them now.

Tony Di Giacomo:

So specifically, if they were somebody were to be moved by your story of wanting to provide financial support, would they find that on your website?

Barbara King:

Yes. They can go to taketripsmes.org. So much information is there. And they’ll see the services that we provide and just, you know, how we started just a whole host of information there. So we even have a donation page where we’re now wanting to donate PPEs for inmates inside of the prison because, and inside of detention, because they don’t have enough hand sanitizer gloves, masks. So we want to be able to take that into them. And I have a connection with the secure detention facility. So I want to be able to, and we want to take trips to be able to get this material to them, supplies to them and say, here, now you have enough, well, not enough because you know, they’re constantly using it, but we want to be able to provide them with that. So they don’t have COVID in there. And then they’re coming out here during this pandemic. So we want to make sure, so all of that stuff you’ll find on the website.

Tony Di Giacomo:

So at Novella Prep, we typically work one-on-one with students and also produce a vast array of more accessible educational content. And I’ve found that when offering free webinars or even presentations at the library in some of the more low-income neighborhoods, there are not very well attended. Often for students to attend such an event. It would require a catalyst of a parent at the home, driving them there, encouraging them to come because you know what? Teenager wants to go here about study skills or college planning on their own. But at the same time, there’s a lot of great information out there that would be powerful. And college access should not necessarily be privileged to really be based on your mind and your work. Right? What more can educators do generally speaking to support the population you’re talking about?

Barbara King:

Well, the first thing is you got to want it, right? And then I think the next thing is to just provide as much information as possible, because I really believe that the disproportionate areas, they don’t get enough information. I think if we are out there and we’re giving them as much information as possible, I do think that things will turn around. I don’t think that you can go in and you can say, well here, you know, we’re doing this webinar. It’s just going to be like, we don’t care. Of course. But if you say, you know, we’re doing this webinar, this is what you can get from it. This is what can happen. And you just kind of stay on them. I think that you will see the influx of individuals gravitating towards that. And that’s the most important thing. And that’s why we put mentors in place, because I feel like mentors can actually talk to the youth and get more from them and kind of pull them in. If they have someone that they know will walk with them and guide them. Then I think they’re more apt to say, you know what, let me see what this is about because this person is really badgering me. This person’s like, you gotta, you gotta see this. So sometimes that’s what it takes.

Tony Di Giacomo:

That’s great. And certainly, you know, in the river journal, there is a monthly column I put out there that has information on the road to college. And what I would hope is that educators in the community that serve your students would take advantage of that information in any of the free webinars and information out there because on their own students, aren’t going to join. But perhaps with some of these mentors you’re describing, they can make better use of this. Even the schools, I have often tried to challenge schools to offer programming because I see students falling through the cracks. And by the way, this is across all schools in the tri-state area, where there are underserved students and it’s not just an economic or cultural racial issue. It’s just that the model is hard to get everybody across the finish line. But with that said, with organizations like yours, hopefully it can spotlight students who need particular support to help break the cycle of poverty and also help advance each of their individual futures because that’s really what it takes. So we’re happy to know that you’re out there doing this wonderful work. And one final question, I guess, would be what future plans do you have for the organization as you continue to grow,

Barbara King:

As we continue to grow, I just want to see the youth succeed. I don’t want another family member to go through what my family went through with the untimely death of my brother. We want to kind of stop this whole recidivism rate and you know, the youth going in, we want to give them as we grow. We want them to grow with us. We want them to know, you know what? You can come back here and we’ll help you. We’ll walk you through this process. And I think that that’s what it is. They have services that kind of take them pathway. And then it’s like, okay, now you’re on your own. You have to, sometimes they’re not used to it. So you have to walk them the full way. And again, I have to say, and I say this all the time, and I know my counselors are like, what?

Barbara King:

But I think the mentors are. So that’s like a major thing for us here at teachers because the mentor is the one who are walking them the whole way, going to court visits with them. That’s big Tony to go to because I don’t care what you’ve tell you. They’re nervous going into the court and not knowing what the judge will say. If the judge will remind them, if the judge will let them go. So to have that companion, that mentor there to, you know, say, okay, I’m here no matter what happens, what the ruling is, we’re going to deal with it. And I think that that’s what they need. And so we want to make sure that we’re walking the entire mile with them. We’re not taking them Hathaway and saying, okay, now you’re on your own. No, we want to walk that entire mile with them and make sure that once they go through do your counseling and let’s get you ready for a job. If we need to provide you clothing, we need to provide you attire for a job interview. That’s what we plan on doing. So, you know, we need the help of the community. You know, we need the donations because that’s how we’re going to be able to provide all of this for them. And to make sure that youth, this population keeps going and be more successful. But again, we have to walk that mile with them.

Tony Di Giacomo:

Like that line, you know, in the students we serve throughout the tri-state area of observed across all economic backgrounds. All students need help walking that last mile all the way through until the finish line. And that’s a line we often use and, you know, listen suffering. And the pain we experience in life as humans is all relative to our own life experience. And some things may pale in comparison to others. And yet we all need that support from the adults in our lives who help champion us and our future. Right?

But sometimes that last mile to walk for some students is uphill and it requires more energy, more momentum, more support and different support and more compassion, I think, to really appreciate exactly what each of them is experiencing on a day-to-day basis. So we thank you for all the work you’re doing and for joining our program today. And we wish you the best of success and hope that somehow what we’re talking about today and we’ll reach a wide audience and people can be inspired by what you’re doing. So thank you so much, Barbara, for your organization, Take Trips MES and for joining today.

Barbara King:

Thank you, Tony. Thanks for having me.

Tony Di Giacomo:

Our pleasure. So that’s all for this episode of A Novel Take. Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe for more discussions on the latest education headlines, key topics and expert interviews. As always, you can learn more about us at novellaprep.wpengine.com and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @novellaprep. I’m Dr. Tony Di Giacomo, bye for now.