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In the last quarter, we worked on the HBCU football camp and combine, and that was a huge success. More than 300 young men registered for that event, and eight college football coaches visited from Bethune-Cookman, Jackson State, Edward Waters, Florida Memorial, St. Thomas and Florida International Universities.
Initiatives
Two boys got scholarship offers from Edward Waters and Florida Memorial University. There was a roundtable discussion about school, coursework to be ready for college and post-college endeavors, what the NFL is like and how it is very much a business. Over two days, the men and the boys had a wonderful time bonding. A lot of our young men didn’t grow up with fathers in the house and so when they have the opportunity to be spoken to by a man, as a man, it’s very meaningful to them.
CareerSource and Miami-Dade County Public Schools showed them that even if school is not their thing, the military and other options are available to them. My goal is that, beginning this upcoming school year, I’ll have a company go into the high schools in Miami Gardens and run a program that gets kids ready for college.
Our pop-up marketplace is growing every month. In May, we did our spring cleaning version where we offered 25 community members free booths, and we’ll do our back-to-school marketplace soon.
It rained on Juneteenth, but it didn’t rain us out. More than 600 cars came to enjoy a “park and party,” so people just got back into their cars, waited for the rain to stop, got right back out and continued to enjoy the show. The fireworks were incredible. We estimate that we had nearly 4,000 people. Most of the performing artists were Miami Gardens residents at one time or another.
We have real concerns about home ownership and are interested in creating some kind of pipeline so people who want to sell homes can be paired with new families. I also did a workshop that addressed the question, “How do you get ready to buy a home for yourself or as an investment property?” It scratched the surface, addressing how people can be courageous in investing their money, and how to fix these properties so they can either sell or rent them, and use the value to acquire the next one.
I want to find a way to equip every home with a Ring device. Many times, those Ring cameras capture things that help the police solve crimes. I’m going to look for other strategies to help our Police Department reduce the crime that goes on in our community.
Miami Gardens is the Place to Be
Because we offer events for the seniors, young adults, youth, professionals and families, I think everybody in Miami Gardens has a circle that they can feel involved in and connected with.
There are so many things — health, exercise, sports, the concerts, the language, the educational side, food, the marketplace. Every week there is something you can do. I think that that’s what makes us alive and makes us feel so connected.
I encourage our residents to participate in the voting process and to make sure that somebody else goes to vote as well. Both local and statewide elections are extremely important. We’ve had a lot of changes since the census. Representation at the Congressional and national levels has shifted. As a Black community, our participation has to be stronger now than ever because we could very well lose the one or two people that we still have left.
