A Piece of Hope

Andrew Hopkins is the youth program coordinator at Hope Community, located on the intersection of Franklin and Portland Avenue. He has worked there for 13 years, building up programs to support the youth of the community. 

D-Hop
Photo Credit- 1

“I grew up in a community and an environment where we were all about helping one another.”

I got nine brothers and one sister. My sister, is military but she works as a civilian. She's in charge of the army hummer truck; she's in charge of that entire program across the country. I got a brother who's in communications, radio. I have a brother who went off into the stocks, numbers and all that. Unfortunately I've had some brothers who went the other routes as well, being incarcerated. I still look up to my big brothers tho, again ya know we were a large but very close knit family. All the good and the bad things that I know in this world I've more or less learned from my brothers.

I come from a very supportive family, growing up in Detroit, my dad worked in the plants like a lot of men and families in the motor city. So we grew up more or less supporting each other whatever endeavors we took actually. I mean it was difficult growing up in Detroit, I mean, Detroit is a tough, tough town; unfortunately a lot of the young men, and women for that matter, you know they just make wrong choices in life. Which actually led me to some of the work that I'm doing because that's what I'm passionate about. My brothers who got into trouble is no different than any other young person. I just think that a lot of youth make poor choices, but the part that's jacked up is, if you don't have the ability to make correct choices then it kind of leads you down those kind of paths.

I had some great mentors in my life so I was very fortunate in that regard. The environment I grew up in was definitely about how do you manage to surpass just where you're at today. My family again was extremely supportive of any and everything that we've done. One thing that my mother use to say that still sticks with me to this day, I grew up on Helen in Detroit and we lived between Vernon and Kurchuble. She use to always say the world does not end on Vernon or Kurchuble so that made me have a bigger perspective whereas a lot of kids weren't getting that message ya know it was like this is it this is all that it is. Unfortunately a lot of my friends who didn't get the opportunities to leave or did not take advantage of opportunities to leave, unfortunately, they ended up dead, jail. Real hard and different type of life than what I got because of the fact that I knew the world didn't end on that corner. So you know my mom would put me into all types of different programs to kind of expose me to different types of opportunities and again I put all of that inside of the work I do here at Hope.

Detroit, Michigan
Photo Credit-2

“Young people can learn, young people can reach expectations, and I’m just here as a catalyst for that”

The way that I started at Hope is kind of funny. I was pursuing music and that’s what brought me to Minnesota. Plus my brother had a basketball scholarship to St. Cloud state, so that’s how we even got familiar with the area. So a lot of times musicians don't make a lot of money *Laughs* so you have to kind of do a job. I never wanted to do a job where I had to go somewhere and be there for eight hours, right? So I and a friend developed a mentoring program around the history of hip hop and rap. I would go and do what they call like residencies, so I would go and be in the school for ya know six weeks; we figured out what kinda creative statement these kids wanted to make. What they decided and wanted to do and we would do it, around hip hop and rap and that allowed me to earn a decent living without having to be somewhere every day for eight hours. Hope Community got hold of the pamphlet, they liked what I did and they asked me to come and do some work with their kids. They would have me come and do different things. Betsy Sohn, our director of community building, she just stuck with me and kept pursuing me and that's how I got on hope's staff, I am the director of youth and family engagement here in Hope Community.

No day looks the same, the work that I do is about this idea and a belief in people, right, that people can change their own communities. Young people can learn, young people can reach expectations, and I’m just here as a catalyst for that. I can’t save anybody from anything. I can't make anybody life greater or worse for that matter, all I can do is attempt to put opportunities and options in front of folk in particularly, young people, to give them the idea to start thinking and that's what I do.

The organization challenged me to create a program in a direction to where kids were more invested in their own success. It led us down a path of really doing one on ones with parents and their child. What we started doing was a sort of preparatory model, ya know preparing kids. We could have looked at it as a way to eliminate kids, but actually, we look at it as a way for a kid and a parent to realistically understand what they're getting into, so their kid and family or whoever can get the most out of those opportunities. I'm committed to this idea that young people can do things given opportunities and given people who're in front of them who genuinely actually care. A lot of times we get into this whole color game about black kids need to be taught by black people or you know of on and so forth I just believe that if kids are put in front of someone who genuinely care about them that can help them in so yeah I do see this as my “calling” *laughs* Yeah. One thing that I'm pretty pretty pretty proud of is we took a look back at kids who had been part of our program for, ya know, pretty extended amount of years all of those kids graduated and all of them are in college now and a couple have actually graduated, so that's that's really cool.

Hope Community Center
Photo Credit- 3

“As far as the youth programming that I do, we tend to look at what things people have in common versus what kind of separates us”

Any job is gonna have challenges, so everyday, literally, I wake up and I'm like damn am I doing the right thing? Should I really be doing this? Is it impactful enough? I mean everyday is a challenge when you're trying to, I mean people shape themselves but when you're trying to create space for people to do that, right. I rattled off some things that we’re greatly happy about; kids graduating blah blah blah but then I say well is that enough kids who're graduating? How do you make a bigger dent? How do you make a bigger impact? So you know there's always those days and when you're working with people, burn out can happen. Because my job doesn't necessarily stop at 5:30, I get calls from parents at 10 o'clock at night. Parents call me ‘D-Hop the school isn't helping me’ so I go in and had to advocate on behalf of parents but more importantly is showing them how to advocate for themselves because I'm not always going to be here, I’ve been here for thirteen years but I ain't always going to be.

Language is also an issue. I've seen this community change meaning that when I first started working here it was maybe 90% African American kids that I'm working with them we had an influx of latino kids that we worked with. Now in LIC, in particular, we have more of a Somali community that's young people that we work with inside that program. So I’ve seen the community go through different types of changes and again language is one of the most significant challenges. Sometimes we as Americans assume because speaking English that actually totally understand everything and that's just not true and vice versa so language is a challenge for us. How do we get people out of their silos? People tend to feel more comfortable congregating with people who look like them and talk like them, but that can lead to isolation, right? We don't come together. It also leads to us being at each other's throat about different things. So one thing as far as the youth programming that I do, we tend to look at what things people have in common versus what kind of separates us. We do know that all parents want their kids in a safe space, to have a positive experience wherever they are at, and to be successful. So some of those base things that don’t matter if you’re red, black, green, tall, fat, short, whatever, all of us want those things so on the side of the youth programming, we try to figure how do we bring that in.

If you do the same thing for different people you're doomed, because you're not recognizing the fact that or what you're saying is that everybody's the same which is even crazier because everybody's not the same. So if we did programming that was exactly the same it wouldn't be very successful we wouldn't be here as long as we're here and we wouldn't be as committed as we are we make sure that our youth are prepared for their opportunities so they understand cause what we're always saying to them in order to be powerful you have to be in powerful places you have to sit at powerful tables and you have to engage with powerful people.

Maintain your beliefs and stay humble, because the systems are setup to crush you literally you know racism sexism, you now, these systems, sometime when you don't when you're on the other side of the systems you don't see really how tragic systems are, I see what the education system does to our kids. I see what the education systems don't do for our kids. I see how housing systems are setup to keep people in certain areas. I see how police systems are setup to control the different things like that. So you know some of those things yeah

I've had my share of issues and challenges just like most people of color I run into that everyday cause just cause the very basis of the melanin in my skin. So it's no real way to deal with it except to deal with it, because there is no one way there is no list it depends solely on who you're engaging with at that moment and it depends solely on what system you're engaging in that moment and you just have to try to do the best you can.

I would like people to remember me as somebody who actually cared. That very simply you know hey he actually cared, you know what I mean, he tried to do something about it, he tried to you know put his finger in and plug the dikes and leaks, that'd be pretty cool for me.

Photo Credit:
1)Andrew Hopkins. Digital image. Hope Community. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.
http://www.hope-community.org/hope-stories
2)Detroit, Michigan. Digital image. Britannica Kids. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016. Web. 9 
Dec. 2016.
http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-54773/Detroit-Michigan?
3)Hope Community. Digital image. Nexus. Nexus Community Partners, 2016. Web. 9 Dec. 
2016
http://nexuscp.org/partner/hope-community/