Day 5 - Friday 15th March

Friday started off with a visit to the offices of the Northern Ireland Bureau where we met the First Secretary, Stewart Matthews.  It was interesting to hear about the work of the Bureau in promoting opportunities for trade and investment, and it was fascinating to get an appreciation of the level of access our politicians have at the highest levels of government here.

Tyrone with his Obama puppet

Next we headed across the river and met Tyrone & Rico, co-founders of the Alliance of Concerned Men.  They were larger than life characters and greeted us with warmth and enthusiasm before going on to explain the work they’re doing to invest in at-risk young people.  Back in the ‘90s when the organisation started out there were 500 homicides a year in DC, the figure is down to 88 a year now.  But their latest campaign is to get the figure down to zero – inspiring stuff.  Tyrone explained their approach as the Martin Luther King way of doing things saying that, “we love the hell out of them”.  We got the chance to meet a volunteer and a young person whose life was transformed by the investment of ACM staff & volunteers in his life – all of whom have themselves been incarcerated – and they helped him to make positive choices that steered him away from gangs and violence.

They also showed us a powerful piece of documentary film, Inside Outside, by Gabriela Bulisova:

"The United States, with more than 5.1 million people confined in prisons or jails or under some form of correctional control, has the highest incarceration rate in the world.  The United States also imprisons more of its racial minorities than any other country in the world.  In Washington, DC, the numbers are even higher – three out of every four young black men are expected to serve some time in prison.  This project offers the first-person accounts and insights of formerly incarcerated men on the process of re-entry.  It casts light on their plight in the hope that we will do more to help these men succeed in becoming productive members of society and caring family members."

A couple of miles away our third stop of the day was a Maya Angelou Charter School run by the See Forever Foundation where young adults up to the age of 22 have the opportunity to gain high school qualifications as well as complete workforce training and certification.  We were impressed by the strength of the staff’s commitment to each young person that comes through the door and how they take a holistic approach to supporting the young adults to reach their potential.

Finally we came to Lifepieces to Masterpieces, an arts-based after-school programme aimed at underserved, African American males and we were blown away with the success that they are achieving through their interventions with boys and young men – only 33% of young people in the locality graduate from high school but 100% of LPTM graduates go on to college or post secondary education.  One of the distinctive features of this organisation is the depth of their work and the fact that they provide a system of development for boys and young men from ages 3-25 – in 17 years they have only worked with approximately 1500 young people, just 2% of the target population.  However they can track the progress these young boys and young men have made through their programmes and the quality of engagement and investment in each young person is very high over a long period of time.  Again it was truly inspirational to meet some of the young people as well as volunteers who are themselves alumni.  A key quote that helped me understand the Lifepieces to Masterpieces process was that in describing a young man on the programme, the Executive Director, Mary Brown, said, “what he didn’t have, he found he could create with a pencil and pen.”  Mary herself was an inspiration and a ball of energy, compassion and drive, it’s clear that this is an organisation that believes in the inherent capacity of young people rather than subscribing to a deficit model:

"We all enter life as a blank canvas, With love, creativity, and discipline, each of us can become a masterpiece."

One of the after-schools groups during a session

Many of the finished canvas portraits are bought by various organisations/businesses for display in their offices, which brings in extra income that goes straight back into the work with the young people

One young man's portrait - a masterpiece in the making

This weekend we’ve had free time, so we’ve all done a variety of things – shopping, visiting some of the many monuments & memorials, checking out some of the museums & galleries, & generally chilling out.  Yesterday I went down to the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial which is very moving.  I had lunch with friends whom I met through Couchsurfing.com over 6 years ago.  Then in the afternoon I checked out a photographic exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and sampled some organic gelato before wandering back towards the Lincoln Memorial checking out the Washington Monument, WWII memorial and Reflecting Pool along the way.  This morning I spent a glorious hour and a bit in Kramer’s – a famous local bookshop – every book-lover’s idea of heaven – then I went to the Korean War Memorial and the new Martin Luther King memorial before doing a quick stop at the White House (where the fountain was green in honour of St Paddy’s Day).  There is so much to see in this city, I’m just going to have to come back some day!  The AMBIT experience has been amazing so far – lots to take in and process, and this blog simply can’t do it justice but we’ve still got a full programme over the next 3 days so there’s more to come!