ATLANTA — Rewind a decade or so, and the Franklin Gateway community, particularly Franklin Road, was no stranger to violence.
“Every community has gone through its challenges, but during that time, a lot of our kids were being recruited to be in gangs,” said Monica Freeman, the director of programs at YELLS.
She added that students were scared to walk home, unsure of who they might run into.
"It was one of those places that when the sun went down at night, you needed to be off the street...Whether it was gang violence, sex trafficking, police activity, you didn't want to be a part of it,” she said
Freeman said that’s why one Marietta High School teacher decided to giver students another option.
Started by Laura Keefe in 2008, the YELLS nonprofit (youth empowerment through learning, leading and serving), matched high school students or “bigs” with elementary school kids, “littles” for a mentoring program.
“You help them with their homework, you talk to them about their day. You're kind of just there for them and their person that they can lean on,” explained Ka’Mya Carter, a sophomore at Marietta High School and a YELLS “big”.
YELLS since expanded to more programs. Along with mentoring, it also has an after-school program for kindergarten through fifth graders and a Community Action Café Teen Center for eighth through twelfth graders.
Jevyn Clark, who started as a “little” and lives in the Franklin Gateway community, is now paying it forward, mentoring the kids just as he was.
He said he’s seen the difference firsthand, adding his neighborhood was “originally dangerous”.
“People know get inside the house before night,” Clark said. “And now that it's changed, it's a lot safer.”
Freeman explained gangs were targeting kids in the community from high school to elementary school.
“Students that these gangs saw that, ‘Oh, if we can just change their trajectory of their life and we can just say, hey, here's a couple of bucks, go rob this person’ It would change their life," she said. "They were recruiting them young. They were seeing these beautiful faces out here and seeing just how impressionable they were...it was because of YELLS, we were like, ‘no, we have a better place for you. We have a better plan.’”
The nonprofit said it plans to expand to another neighborhood, the Fair Oaks community.
Ka’Mya and her mom agree, adding the impact is clear on not only the elementary school kids, but also the high schoolers.
“It built confidence within her,” Kisya Carter, Ka’Mya’s mom said. “And I think that that made her want to help others even more. She's just a different kid altogether.”
Ka’Mya said YELLS gives teens and kids a safe space.
“They’ve given me a shoulder to lean on, someone to talk to, a group to just grow and develop and people to guide me in the right way,” the 15-year-old said.
YELLS said 100% of the high school students that go through the program not only graduated high school, but also either went on to college or the workforce.