Step 1: Educating the Youth-
Education is the number one factor in curving gun violence. The youth are directly or indirectly educated by teachers, parents, immediate family members, and community members’ actions and decisions. In the early 1990s and 2000s, Prince Georges County, Baltimore Maryland and the Nation’s Capital Washington D.C. held the record of the highest rate for violent crimes being committed with a weapon. The result of this statistic lead to mass incarceration. Mass incarceration has a rippling effect throughout predominantly poor communities. For example, the result of incarceration removes the men, who are the fathers, brothers, uncles, and sons, out of the households. The incarceration of the men directly affects the youth because the leaders of the household, which are the incarcerated men, are stuck behind a wall. The poverty, the drugs, mental health, and gun violence of that decade is a core relation of what the youth are doing today. The invisible walls are getting higher and they’re getting stronger!
Step 2: Evaluation-
A major problem we face, that hinders minorities and keeps us at the bottom is the scrutiny and the bias of the world. Meaning the world already decided that people like us belong at the bottom. It is important for our people to maintain their dignity and their personal values. All in a nutshell, if you know better then you’ll do better. Together we can break down the invisible walls, that are systematically built in front of us, overtop of us, and around us. Breaking Down Walls Foundation will do this by educating the youth on financial liberation and economic regeneration. We can push this message to the youth by showing them a better avenue to increase their revenue, without the gun violence. Breaking Down Walls Foundation will mentor and monitor at risk youth by providing training, creating and completing milestone goals, provide a safe space for the youth to exhale, all while encouraging the youth to dream big, and find a pursuit of happiness. It is so critical that youth of the future can be guided. It is so important for the youth to finally find a lasting way out of the mentality of short-term survival.
Step 3: Cultivation-
We must change the culture! Once we educate and elevate the youth our final step is to provide the blueprint. Consider the blueprint to be the train tracks of this plan. If we neglect a solution for our youth, the gun violence throughout our communities will continue to shatter the lives, families, and futures of the next decade. Leading to growing incarceration and even higher walls for those after us to combat.
Step 4: Cause and Effect-
Breaking Down Walls Foundation was created to change the dynamics of disrupted households. All while rescuing the at-risk youth and assist the forgotten men that are trapped behind the walls and their families. We can do this through mentorship. We can do this by sponsorship of lending a helping hand to the single mothers, who are directly affected by the acts of gun violence. We can do this through alleviating financial burdens of the families that are directly affected because the men are trapped behind the walls. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Breaking Down Walls Foundation is that village!
