A Credible Messenger What Does One Look Like?

 
The lives of justice-involved youth are just as valuable as other youth. There is no throwaway youth. The golden question is how do I make a youth see value in themselves? The platinum question is how do I get them to critically analyze the values or philosophies that made them justice-involved? ​

Credible Messenger is a term and a movement that gains its archetype from people like Dr. Divine Pryor, my friend and unofficial mentor as well as the great late Eddie Ellis, the founder of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions who presented the Seven Neighbor Study which identified 7 NYC neighborhoods that accounted for over 75% of Black and Brown NYS incarcerated population.

 What does a Credible Messenger embody? A formerly incarcerated person with a prison story and street credibility? Or one with transformed thinking, behavior who is showing the results in their life? If the bar is set too low, we will get poverty pimps that followed the money from Civil Rights Era initiated programs. If we set the bar too high, we will miss those that are applying their transformed thinking in real-time; and lack some of the socio-political networking and job skills that are desired.

A key Credible Messenger factor should be integrity. This could be surmised from their current viewpoint, personal growth initiative, and future outlook as well as steps they have taken to transform a criminal mentality and the why behind it. It will be the governing principles in their lives.

The nonprofits that value the Credible Messenger skillset; should place them in positions to develop and advance beyond entry-level positions. City politicians need to do a better job in identifying grassroots lead Credible Messenger organizations and give them funding on the same level of non-Credible Messenger lead organizations.

What does a Credible Messenger look like? Like you! A person with an earnest desire to help justice-involved youth transform their thinking, analyze their philosophy, and modify their behavior to be the best version of themselves.

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