By Dianne Anderson

They may enter as boys, but when they graduate they’re more like kings at SBX Youth and Family Services, where their students learn who they are and what they can become.

Kayla Booker, SBX Black Empowerment coordinator, said their mentoring programs have helped many Black students make the grade at school, and they gain life skills to grow up productive and confident.

It’s also about self-identification, learning about their real past and their future.

“They really turn into young men. They look you in the eye, give you a firm handshake and introduce themselves. It’s amazing,” Kayla Booker, SBX Black Empowerment coordinator.

Through BRAAF (Riverside County’s Building Resiliency in African American Families), along with many other free SBX programs, students access an extensive technology program, and Rites of Passage guides middle and high school students through their African history.

“I would say this generation of youth are very confused and very lost, but having these programs show them that there are better and bigger things out there for them. We all need mentorship as a youth,” she said.

Girls from middle through high school also learn under a professional dance instructor who teaches African dances. Last year, they performed at Juneteenth, along with other local events.

“It’s open and completely free,” she said. “They learn about different countries, and the Rites of Passage that we went through as kings and queens, that we’re more than just slaves in history,” she said.

The Fatherhood program, led by two African American males, offers full curriculum and six cohorts, all covering what it takes to be a good dad. Over the weekend, another dozen Black fathers graduated from that program.

Booker said as dads, they face numerous challenges in society, some with relationships, or some are afraid of becoming a father, but they receive program support in several ways, including how to keep their babies alive. Black babies die over two times that of white babies.

SBX also distributes diapers, care packages, self-care and packages for newborn babies.

“We give incentives for fathers to come into the program with grocery or gas cards. We really want to support the fathers that are coming to us and see how we can make their journey a little easier,” she said.

SBX Co-CEO Darrell Peeden said their fatherhood program in partnership with Riverside County is highly sought after for the progress they are making with local dads. It goes well beyond the course work and material.

Last year, he said they also received ARPA funding, including an award to help build a permanent housing project in Moreno Valley targeting youth homelessness. Their program serves Moreno Valley, Perris and Hemet.

Other SBX projects include their BreatheIE program to help mitigate asthma triggers in the community. The organization was also strong in COVID response outreach, and received another grant similar to work in distributing hygiene kits to reach 1,000 in the unhoused community.

Peeden said the nonprofit has deep roots.

“When we serve a family, we’re bringing them into the SBX universe. The last two years we did a rapid rehousing program. We spent over $1 million housing folks and dealing with emergency shelter issues for families,” he said.

Youth development and mentoring are key to the program’s success, which reflects his own start in 1998, along with now Assemblymember Dr. Corey Jackson, and co-CEO Berenice Zuniga. They were all mentored as students in the program, recruited by Rialto High School teacher Ernest Rhone IV, who was also their advisor.

By 12th grade, he said they talked about how they could continue the work once they graduated.

“We wanted to make sure the work that we benefited from, that we were able to do the same thing for young people,” he said. “We saw it was difficult to address the needs that young people had when their families were suffering.”

At that time, the organization rebranded to include a family component, and saw an explosion in demand for services. Closing the digital divide in the IE was a priority. During the pandemic, they worked with the Moreno Valley unified school district, helping distribute over 1700 hotspots to the community’s young people.

All SBX board members, mostly African American, were participants as youth, trained in the program to be leaders. Peeden also remembers being quoted in the local newspaper in 1999 as saying they don’t wait around for adults to tell them what to do because they are the next future professional leaders.

“That’s the essence of SBX. We really are developing young people, not telling them what they need to do, but rather giving them tools to make the right decisions to get out there and work and make a difference in their community,” he said.

For more information, see https://www.sigmabetaxi.com/braaf

and https://www.sigmabetaxi.com/black-fatherhood