WASHTENAW, Mich. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – One in five high school students reported being bullied last year.
Twelve young people a day are victims of homicide and every 24 hours, almost 14,000 kids are treated in emergency rooms for non-fatal, assault-related injuries.
Youth violence is not just traumatic for the kids involved, but for their moms, as well. Now, one woman is reaching out to them… creating a healing space, helping moms cope, survive and thrive.
Several times a year, Paula Davis visits this rock behind a gas station, and reads a poem written by her 17-year-old son Kenneth, who was shot and killed here.
Davis reads, “Who am I? I am a young man who is desperate for change, but yet I am still a man who is suffering in pain.”
She is one of 50 mothers, finding comfort for her pain, through ‘S.U.R.E Moms’: Sisters, United, Resilient, and Empowered.
”I felt empty, and with them, I felt like I was honored, I was somebody,” Davis says of the support from S.U.R.E Moms.
The idea was born when Florence Roberson, who was volunteering at a county jail in Michigan, saw how desperate some moms were.
”These parents out there are falling apart. I said these mothers are telling me they have no support.” Roberson explains.
Their kids were locked up, murdered, or teetering on the edge. Without each other, they say they’d be hopeless. Members are referred by the sheriff’s department, courts, schools and community partners.
Roberson says, “And it was just a broad thing, of going to court with them, going to funerals with them, going with them to give them support.”
The support has allowed Shenita Draw to be a better mother to her three kids. She was desperate after her fourth, a son, was murdered near this tree last year.
Draw says, “Before I came across them, I felt that I was by myself. That I had to deal with his death alone.”
And that’s why Roberson says this is the most important thing she’s ever done, “Because I get a chance to see women that come in that say, ‘I’m at the end of my rope’, and a month later, sometimes three or four months, I’m watching them just grow, and grow and grow.”
The program began five years ago and is a partnership between the county’s juvenile court system and the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office. Roberson hopes to grow it locally and nationally.
Source: https://www.childrensdefense.org/state-of-americas-children/soac-2021-youth-justice/
Contributor(s) to this news report include: Milvionne Chery, Producer; Roque Correa, Videographer and Editor. To receive a free weekly email on Smart Living from Ivanhoe, sign up at: http://www.ivanhoe.com/ftk