By Molly Willms, NPC Guest Blogger

Throughout her career, Joyce Mallory has worked with and for boys and men of color.

So it’s only natural that the former school board member and current organizational development consultant – to name just a few of the hats she’s worn – served as co-coordinator of the Nonprofit Center’s Building Opportunity for Boys and Men of Color conference on October 30.

Mallory’s position at NPC generally puts her in a more indirect role when it comes to working with boys and men of color.

“My role at the Nonprofit Center is helping nonprofits strengthen their capacity to be more effective,” Mallory said. “For example, when I do a big development training for one of our member organizations, specifically a community development block grant-funded agency, that is building their capacity to better serve boys and men of color because the majority of those organizations do serve boys and men of color.”

Mallory was organization development consultant with NPC from 2003 to 2007, before leaving to be the executive director of the Malaika Early Learning Center. She returned to the NPC staff in 2013.

Many of the children she served at Malaika were African American boys, whose fathers she worked with to strengthen their families.

“I had the opportunity to interact with dads on a daily basis,” Mallory said. “We had activities that specifically engaged the fathers of the children, because a lot of the fathers were not custodial, and we wanted to make sure that they felt welcome and could participate in the early education and development of their child.”

In her 10-year stint on the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, she spearheaded a task force to address the lagging achievement of African American boys.

It’s clear Mallory has done a lot – but she says her work is not yet finished.

“We can and must do better by boys and men of color,” Mallory said. This is the long-term goal of the collaborative work that will follow the Boys and Men of Color Week events.

“Structural disparities continue to exist in Milwaukee,” she said, “and part of this whole effort is to have a thoughtful discussion and come up with a coordinated effort to say, ‘We can begin to dismantle those barriers that limit opportunity and, at the same time, support, encourage and nurture the potential and promise of boys and men.’”

“I see this, and the Nonprofit Center sees this, as just the beginning. Now that the first Boys and Men of Color Week is over, the hard work starts,” Mallory said.

Her goal is to create and strengthen pathways to opportunity for boys and men of color, she said, and make sure they know these pathways are accessible.

If that goal is achieved, everyone wins, Mallory said, quoting the conference motto: “When boys and men of color succeed, Milwaukee succeeds.”

By Dawn Helmrich, United Way of Greater Milwaukee
Re-posted from the Speak United Blog

“Innovation requires discontent.” Those were the words of Eric Grimes, keynote speaker at the Nonprofit Center's conference on Building Opportunity for Boys and Men of Color. The day was filled with workshops and activities on how we can change the path for boys and men of color. I went into the day wondering what change could really occur. How was I going to make a difference? I decided to stop simply listening for a moment and begin to really hear what was being said.

In a workshop entitled: Community Mediation: Building Capacity to Mediate, Resolve Conflict, Heal Trauma and End Violence, an exercise was conducted where we all gave input on what it meant to belong to something, have freedom, security, power and fun. We shouted out answers enthusiastically from our own lives, things like family, hope, love, money, happiness, and self-worth. 

At the end of the workshop, facilitator LaShawndra Vernon looked at us and said “think about the deficit.” A lot of our young boys of color don’t start with any of these things. They don’t come to the table with family, hope, love, money, happiness or self-worth. Suggestions were made on how we change that. Don’t take the kid that is always on top, always doing the right thing and make him the leader. Grab the kid that annoys you, the one who gets on your nerves. THAT kid has the skills to mediate. Give him some structure to funnel that energy, make him a leader. Make him a leader.

We don’t do that well. We don’t understand that many of these boys come with deep rooted trauma that stems from a long history of racism. Many people don’t like that explanation, some will feel uncomfortable with that fact. But I remember those words: “innovation requires discontent.”

Some of the best leaders in this community are men of color, yet they have to speak loudly and often to be heard. Boys and Men of Color Week was the first of its kind in this country. If you think about that long and hard it is pretty difficult to swallow. Little has changed in this community around social and economic conditions. Eric Grimes stated “if your soul isn’t troubled by what is happening, get out of the way”. My soul is troubled -- it is time to feel discontent.

Allow those that have the voice to speak, make way for diverse boards and diverse staff. Stop labeling young men of color as “at risk” or “troubled” youth. Open of the door for those men to guide us in how to make things better in this community. The tables that we sit at need to look differently for change to occur. We need to be okay with that.

When I went home I thought about the young black boy who lives across the street. The boy who has been coming to my dinner table since he was four years old and is now 15, the boy who I have scolded for speaking out of turn, the boy who has no mother, no father, no family, the one who annoys me and gets on my nerves.

I walked across the street and handed him the t-shirt I received from the conference. We talked about how he is one of the 181,000 boys of color in this community, his community. He is a future leader. I told him I thought he would make a great leader one day. The smile on his face was something I will never forget. And I felt it strongly inside of me, the desire to get out of the way and let them lead.