GD Sandeford Memorial Scholarship

My community has always meant alot to me. From the candy lady on the end of the street, to the old man who always offered up a couple extra dollars for the ice cream truck. Every person I've ever been surrounded with is rooted deeply in my heart. I never understood the phrase "it takes a village", until I no longer had that village behind me. When I was no longer a little girl who could run down the street to her friends house and play until the street lights came on. When I could no longer race my friends to school in the early, cold Chicago mornings. I no longer had that community because it was subsequently destroyed by corruption. Drugs, guns, police brutality. My mother kept me in the house for a week when Tamir Rice was killed. My brother wasn't allowed to wear a hoodie anywhere after Treyvon Martin. We couldn't go outside and play anymore, because gangs ran rampant, and their new trigger happy members didn't know the difference bewteen a child and their target. Kids were joining too. I lost one of my closest friends to a gang he decided to join when we were 8 years old. I couldn't understand it at the time. But I realize now he thought he had to provide for his family, so he joined under the impression that slinging dope would give him the money he needed to buy groceries and pay bills. He'd be shot dead at the local playground behind our houses a few months later. When I look at what overran my community and ultimately, what took it away from me, I began to wonder what I could do to help. I felt lost until I got to highschool, when a teacher reccomended I go to law school based off of a presentation I gave for my inequality and social change class. He said we needed more people like me in those seats. People who came from the communities our governemnt heads only speak of, but never do anything about. I gave it thought, and wondered if I could really make a difference. If someone like me, given my background, could make a change in this country. So I began doing research, and ultimately I decided on being a political science major with a minor in pre-law when I got to college. I wanted to be on track to go to law school, and figured that degree would be the best at helping me achieve my goal. I want to use my degree to give my people their voice back. I'm going to run to be mayor of my city once I've finished my schooling and completed my service in the military. I'm going to shine a light on the underprivleged, underserved and long forgotten neighborhoods. The children will get their schools back, teachers will be more respected and valued, people will get their jobs back. Families reunited. I'm going to take the guns and the drugs out of my neighborhoods. Police will be trained on non-fatal force and how to interact with the people of the communties they serve. I will not allow the things that took my community away from me to continue taking communities away from the next generations. My degree will allow me to give back to my community by making change where it counts. If you want to see change, you must start from within. So I plan to change my community from the inside first.

We are all shaped by the people who help raise us. However, this is not limited to the loved ones in our home. Countless influences come from connections we make with others in our community. Our morals are instilled by our caregivers and influenced by our role models and mentors. Growing up without my father's presence, I leaned on the positive male figures in society to help guide me. Like most young men raised without a father, youth sports were critical to my development. Momma could kiss my booboos and provide clothes and food, but she could not teach me how to be a man. Instead, I had to learn specific life lessons from men who could relate to my struggles and understand my behaviors and thinking. My youth football coaches started this process and gave me discipline, focus, and confidence. They helped a kid with abundant energy and no direction channel his abilities toward a positive path and strengthened his belief in himself. I recognize the impact those coaches and the game of football had on my life. I have been a volunteer football coach for the past eight years. I started at the age of twenty-three in an urban community where many kids I coached were from similar backgrounds to me. Teaching the game and watching them succeed on the field was joyful, but the biggest reward was helping them develop and blossom as young men. Helping cultivate these kids and carve out a path for their self-growth, and building a sustainable positive relationship for them to flourish clarified my passion for helping youth. After five years of coaching Pop Warner football, I was recruited by my local high school to be a volunteer coach at the freshmen level. I was also hired in the school district and worked at multiple different schools at all three levels, elementary, middle, and high school. This broadens my scope of children to assist, from kindergartens to seniors, and only reinforces my hunger to help youth who were misguided, misunderstood, or lost in that moment of their life. Once I obtain my degree, I will continue these efforts and elevate to a more prominent position where I can make a more significant difference. I aim to be a varsity coach or an athletic director. Upon receiving my degree, I can qualify for these positions. I will use my degree and the knowledge I have learned to help mold young men and women to aspire to be the best version of themselves. I want to grow my community, starting with the youth and preparing them for the challenges they will face as they mature and enter adulthood. Most importantly, I want to encourage them to have faith in their skills and ability and ensure they know they are uniquely themselves and may accomplish anything they set their mind to.