First in a series
In a cynical, densely busy world, chance can play an important role.
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Founders Karen and Keith Johnson
Several weeks ago, by chance, an easily overlooked story turned up in the newspaper’s In box.
A man with an unremarkable name filed a report about a Pop Warner League football team from South Los Angeles that was playing a game the next day to qualify for a dream trip to Orlando to play in a national championship round of games.
The boys were 13 to 15 years old.
Not eye-catching.
What did arrest attention was that all of these black and Hispanic boys were searching for stability, whatever it looked like, in their personal lives.
At the Ready
Enter, seven years ago, Keith Johnson.
A former foster child, he made the prickly transition from untethered home life to hugely successful professional, married a smart woman, raised two now-adult children with her, and in the plum years of their lives, they are seeking to do the same with hundreds of others.
They work to develop the entirety of the child, inside and out, head, not just hands, feet and muscles. And especially in the cases of boys, their athletic gifts are subordinate to development and discipline in other, less glamourous, dimensions of their lives.
Falcons Youth and Family Services offers a rare human portrait to those in need – and those able to help.
A social services specialist who wearied of constantly traveling the country as a motivational speaker, for business and for youth groups, the middle-aged Mr. Johnson today is a youth minister at New Pleasant Hill Church, 96th and Vermont, in addition to operating Falcons Youth and Family Services.
Possessor of an ocean of passion, he introduces his boys and girls, and you had better listen fast and closely.
Mr. Johnson’s candor is heartbreakingly raw, sometimes scary.
Who They Are
“Falcon Youth and Family Services is a community-based organization that has, as its purpose, simply, moving kids from a point of pain to a point of power.
“We are based in South Los Angeles, where there are many challenges. Unemployment here ranges as high as 40 percent. Some schools here in the Los Angeles Unified School District not only are among the lowest performing in the city but in the state as well as the nation.
“Crime is rampant. We are part of the Newton and 77th police precincts, which has some of the highest crime rates in the city.
“Probably 75 to 80 percent of our parents are single parents.
“We have an extremely high concentration of foster parents.
“And so a lot of challenges are going against the kids.”
Like Johnny Appleseed two hundred years ago, Mr. Johnson glides among these chosen students sprinkling epigrammatic pearls of insight, promise and wisdom.
“We want to help them understand that who they are, is not necessarily a product of their environment,” he says. “Where they will be, is greater than where they are right now.”
(To be continued)
