BY: JOHN PERKINS
 
The Monday morning staff meeting started like they all do on Zoom these days.  I had my coffee and a nice shirt on over my pajamas. 

As folks gathered, Mike was saying that he had been rereading Isaiah 61 lately. I remembered that that was in the Bible somewhere and made a note. Do not worry; it’s not long, and the words are easy to pronounce. 

As the meeting got underway, conversation quickly turned to the “CBS Sunday Morning” story the previous day and the numbers of people reaching out to the staff as a result. They broadcast a story on Community Renewal International (CRI) and their Friendship Houses in Shreveport.

The story featured the Friendship House at 1515 Clay St. in Allendale. Sharpel and Emmitt Welch are leading the neighborhood youth programs. And they have taken in seven children into their home to raise.  Whoa!

Talk turned quickly to the overwhelming national response to the “CBS Sunday Morning” piece. It seems that the normally dormant Community Renewal phones were ringing Sunday with questions from around the country: “How can we get this going in my city?” There were plenty of visits to the CommunityRenewal.us webpage, too. 

People from all over the country called and emailed their support, and their questions about how the Friendship House program can be replicated in their hometowns.

 It must have been almost overwhelming for the staff of about 40, mostly volunteers, who work every day to keep the programs going in neighborhoods in Shreveport/Bossier. The discussion roared on about the number new contacts made that Monday resulting from an eight-minute video recorded here in Shreveport in February.

Yes, February seems like it was years ago now. I began to feel something I have not felt in a long while:  Hopeful about Shreveport. 

That hope began years ago with Mack McCarter’s simple knock on a door in an area of Allendale known as The Hill.  The Hill looks vastly different today. It started when Mack first knocked on a door and said, “there’s a group of us that believe if we’ll get to be friends, then we can change this city”.

So, for a little while on Sunday, July 13, 2020, Shreveport was recognized around the country as a city of hope, a city of friends, a city of positive possibility.  This does not sound like the Shreveport we see on the news. But it is the city I recognize when I am in Allendale visiting my friends. 

I see the Sharpel and Emmitt working with the after-school program children sponsored by CRI.  I get to watch those kids grow into wonderful young adults who have traveled to New York and Washington DC among other places they might not have visited otherwise. 

The success stories coming out of that one Friendship House are amazing.  Fortunately for us, there are more Friendship Houses in Shreveport and Bossier. We all know that our community needs more. 

We need more friends, more volunteers to help neighbors, and to encourage students.  Plain and simple. We need more CRI Friendship Houses in our neighborhoods to address poverty and crime. 

CRI can tell you better than I can.  They have recorded a 44% reduction in major crime in Friendship House areas.  We could use that all over town, but my favorite statistic. 

Three thousand (and counting) lives of children and youth transformed.  All of this because of a practice of creating relationships of caring.  Shreveport and Bossier can be amazing sometimes.  I choose to spend my time with these amazing people more and more.  What about you?
 

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE July 24 ISSUE OF FOCUS SB - THE INQUISITOR.