A Little Boy Named Jarvis

There is a little boy named Jarvis.  Well, he's not so little.  He's in 6th grade.  But he's small for his age.  He is one of the cutest kids ever with an adorable smile.  He loves snakes and riding his bike.  He is protective of his little brothers.

He's reminds me of the child in this poem:

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad,
She was horrid.

When Jarvis is good, I love that kid.  When he sees me, his whole face lights up with that adorable smile and he throws his arms around me in a big hug.

When Jarvis is bad, he's horrid.  And I still love him.

I've seen him at his worst, his saddest, and his lowest.  I watched as he struggled in school and was sent to ISS over and over again.  I watched as his family was homeless this past summer as they moved from motel to motel because it was too dangerous to be at their duplex where someone had broken in.  I watched his face crumble when a neighbor ran out of the house yelling that his mom had been taken to jail and I held him as he cried with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Jarvis, Jarvis, Jarvis.  I was so full of hope when I interned in your classroom that first day.  I thought I could change your life around in one week.  I was so determined that I could get you and your two friends under control.  The next day I sat at an empty table in disbelief.  I had taken you three to the bathroom the day before and you guys got into a fight.  You were all suspended for a week.  I stared at that empty table for one solid week and it represented my failure.  Could I not even get three children under control?

My whole internship, you were like the girl in that poem.  You could be so sweet and then turn around and be so horrid.  I remember once when you were in trouble and there was nothing I could do but take you out in the hall and talk to you.  We sat on the floor and I stared at your dirty shoes with holes in them.

"You know, Jarvis."  I said.  "There are children who don't have anything nice.  Food, clothes, or shoes."

You looked up at me.  "You mean those children in Africa?  I will send them my shoes."

Oh, sweet boy.  I was talking about you and your ragged shoes, but all you thought about was children who are poorer than yourself.

I sat next to you in church and I was overwhelmed at how the odds are stacked against you.  You sat next to me oblivious to the pain in my heart.  How, God?  I asked.  How can a boy in the projects who's life is the furthest thing away from your perfect plan change his life around?  It seems so impossible.  Everything in his life is twisted.  Marriage doesn't even exist in his world - only casual sex and abandonment. 

I laugh at my ignorance the first week I met you.  Change your life in one week?  Me?  I must of have been living in a fake world of Christian summer camps or something.  Radical change in one week?  I've known you for a year and I'm still struggling to see any change in you.

I never understood when parents discipline and they say, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," until I had to discipline you a couple weeks ago, Jarvis.  I had warned you over and over again that if you got sent home three times at tutoring that you wouldn't be able to come back until the next quarter in April.

But you didn't listen.  Or you didn't care.  Or you just couldn't behave.  I honestly don't know.

You got sent home three times and I had to remove you from the tutoring program until April.  On your last day, you acted like the old Jarvis during my internship and I think I know why.  Is that your way of pretending to not care?  To pretend that you're not embarrassed when I call you out?  Is it easier to act out and put on a show to make the other kids laugh than it is to cry?

It broke my heart to send you away.  I kept telling my family, "Jarvis got sent home three times."  Other kids have been sent home and they come back having learned their lesson, but I hated to see you go.

I'll still see you at school, WyldLife, and at Music Camp but I will miss you at tutoring, my sweet boy.

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Now is the Time to Help a Child, Not Later

WOW Kids Outreach runs a tutoring/mentoring program on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-6pm.  Like everything else we do, we have a ton of boys who come to our program.  The boys usually out number the girls in most of our programs.  We desperately need guys to come and invest in these boys who are going to grow up to be men one day.

The tutoring program is what I love most.  I'm in college to be a teacher, so it's a perfect fit for me.  I have volunteered at East Lake Academy for three years and I interned at East Lake Elementary.  I have been in these children's schools and they are broken.  Very broken.  Believe it or not, the elementary school is actually worse than the middle school. 

The city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County are letting us use the old Piney Woods Elementary school building right across the street from Emma Wheeler Homes for our tutoring program.  It hasn't been used as a school since 1992.  From the outside it looks abandoned, but the inside is very nice and full of potential.  Before we came in, it was a huge building that was underused with just a Family Resource Center.  Now it is full of kids every Tuesday and Thursday.

Our tutoring program is off to a wonderful start and every week we talk and tweak stuff to make it even better.  This is not your average help-with-homework-and-go-home tutoring program.  We split the kids into three groups: Pre-K, K-2nd grade, and 3rd-8th grade.  3-8th grade are put onto different colored teams and transition throughout five different classes in two hours.  The five classes are Math, Language Arts, Bible, Manners, and Drama.

We don't just have classes.  We also have a computer lab with twenty new computers that were donated.  We also have a library that has been organized and labeled with a ton of great books.  We even have a thrift store full of clothes, school supplies, and toys for the kids to go shopping when they earn WOW Bucks for good behavior.

It doesn't stop there!  The kids are able to earn Sunday trips every two weeks if they have good behavior.  These trips can be anywhere from the aquarium to the zoo to on top of the mountain to hike and play on the Pumpkin Patch Playground.  All of the places I just listed are places that these kids have never been before! These kids live in the shadow of the mountain, but most of them have never driven up it before.  Most of them have never been to a museum before.  Most of them have never been to the Chattanooga zoo or the aquarium.  One of our goals are exposing these kids who live in the projects to the wonderful world around them that they hardly ever get to see.

All of this is happening every week and we are still working on putting even more into our program.  We talked to people today about starting a basket ball program this June.  One of my biggest desires is tapping into every kid's potential.  Whether that is through a basket ball program, a jewelry making class, a knitting class, a computers class, etc.

What we desperately need is YOU!  We can do all this without you!  I can have all these wonderful ideas, but it takes you to kick them off.  If you just want to volunteer and be that one person who gives a kid the attention that they really want or you have a skill that you would like to teach them like computers, drama, music, sports, chess, photography, knitting, etc every little bit helps!

I recently went to a conference where a man was teaching a photography workshop with inner-city boys.  The boys loved it.  He shared that one day it hit him that he would die and all his knowledge would die with him unless he took the time to pass it on to the next generation.

We are working with Chattanooga's future.  The next generation.  You decide what kind of Chattanooga that you want your kids to grow up in.  Now is the time to invest.  We can't wait until these kids are grown or getting in trouble to help them.

Last week, I was dropping kids off at home in Emma Wheeler after our tutoring program took a field trip to Silverdale's fall festival.  It was late and the moon was already up.  We drove right past three cop cars that were surrounding a boy who looked like he couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen.  They had him sitting on the curb with his arms handcuffed behind his back.

When we drove past, he looked up at us and the expression on his face was one of the saddest things that I have ever seen.

"Just think." My mom said.  "If he has been with us tonight at our tutoring program, he wouldn't be getting arrested right now."

Who knows what talent that boy has.  Who knows if his talents will one day rot away on a jail cell because of a stupid decision he made as a teenager persuaded by some wanna be gangsters looking for something to do on a Thursday night.

(Newspaper article about Chattanooga's gang problem)

I sincerely believe that the only way Chattanooga is going to overcome our gang problem is by the Church being willing to go out of our comfort zones.  A lot of people have never been to the projects or been a minority before.  I know that I never had until we went to East Lake Courts to pass out clothes a couple years ago, but God opened up a huge door and now I help run an inner-city ministry.  Can you say WOW?!

Now I'm in the projects almost everyday and I love it.

Why don't you come down to the projects and check out our tutoring program?  We would love to have you visit (the kids love visitors!) and check it out.  Shoot me an email if you're interested (parisakins@gmail.com)!

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Fundraiser for the WOW Kids Dance Team

WOW Kids Dance Team

Malek

Kay-Kay

Kimberly

Jamal

WOW Kids has started a dance team with four kids that live in East Lake.  We performed for the first time at the WOW Kids Music Camp this past Sunday.

One of our goals for the dance team is for the kids to stay culturally relevant as they bring the Gospel to their community.  One of the ways we do this is through Lecrae's raps.  The kids in East Lake LOVE Lecrae so much!

Lecrae is on the Unashamed Tour right now and they will be in Atlanta next Friday (October 19th).  This would be HUGE if our dance team could go to this concert.  Not only would it impact them spiritually, but they would get to see African-American men using their talent to glorify God up on stage.  They never see that in their community.  All they see are the secular rap stars on TV.

I know that this is super-short notice, but I believe that if God wants these kids to go then He will provide.  He provided for my 18th birthday wish to the Atlanta Dream Center and I'm praying that He will provide for this also.

The Cost

• $132 for tickets.  The tickets are $22 a person and we taking four kids from the dance team and two chaperons.
• $100 for gas to get to Atlanta and back home.
• $100 for dinner.

Total Cost: $332

If you feel like God is laying it on your heart to contribute in any way, please contact me.  Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Email: parisakins@gmail.com or winourworld@gmail.com

Phone: Paris Akins (423) 645-2991

Facebook: Paris Akins or WOW Kids

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in Emma Wheeler.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Case of the Stolen Camera

WOW Kids at BBC!

We took twenty-three kids from East Lake to Brainerd Baptist this past Sunday.  One of those kids was an eleven-year-old BB (Baby Blood) gang member, Federico, who attacked our car with carrots and rocks last time we saw him.  

We expect a lot from our East Lake kids when we take them out and we're strict, but we discipline with love.  For some reason, all the kids went berserk this past Sunday.  When church let out, they scattered and immediately started breaking rules.  We had kids yelling, running, going upstairs, going outside, fighting, etc.

I was very disappointed and the kids could tell.  I knew that my kids were better than this.  Wayyy better.  Most of these kids I've been working with for almost a year - a year of training and getting to know them.

I tell kids all the time, "You can fight on the streets back in East Lake.  I don't bring you to church so you can  fight.  I bring you to church so you can learn about God."  If kids aren't ready for church, we take them home until they are.

I was ready to take all the kids home because of their bad behavior!  Everything we were saying was going in one ear and out the other.  We eventually had to gather all the kids on the stairs and give them a talk.  The plan was to go to Coolidge Park after church, but we told them that we could only do that if everyone agreed to behave.  My mom (Kara Akins) told them, "We're going to see how you guys do in the car on the way over there.  If one person breaks a rule, it will ruin the trip for everyone and we'll have to take you guys home early."

We loaded all twenty-three kids up in our cars and headed to Coolidge Park.  On the way there, Jarvis got angry and yelled out a cuss word.  We had to turn around and take the kids home.

When I finally got home, I felt like it had been a really crummy day.  Did the kids even learn anything today? I wondered.  Or did they just go backwards?  Did I just waste half my day getting nothing accomplished?

I took a deep breathe and me and my mom started planning for next Sunday to prevent this from happening again.  I thought that it couldn't get any worse, but it did.

The next day, Monday, the church called and said that a camera had gone missing Sunday.  

The security cameras had caught a boy taking it.  

It looked like one of our boys.

I immediately thought that it was Federico who took it, but when we looked at the pictures from the security cameras, my heart sunk.

The boy caught on tape was my kiddo who never gets in trouble, my kiddo who has the cutest dimples when he smiles, my kiddo that is superstar material.

He's the kid that everyone loves.

We went to his house and he confessed and gave us the camera that he had taken.  We started talking and somehow Satan came up in our conversation.

"Satan?"  He asked.  "Who's that?"

"You don't know who Satan is?"  My mom asked.

"No.  Is it sin?"  He asked.

She explained who Satan is and asked him, "Have you ever been saved?"

"I don't know what that means."  He said.

It amazes me that, in the Bible Belt, there are kids who don't know this stuff.  When I leave East Lake, I count all the churches that we pass.  On one street there are seriously, like, five.  How can there be five churches on one street in the inner-city and I meet kid after kid who answers my questions about Jesus with a puzzled expression on their face?

I look at this situation with the stolen camera and I see a story in the making.  Who knows, maybe this boy will one day grow up to be a strong Christian and when he shares his testimony it will start with how he stole a camera from a church and ended up learning what it means to be saved.

You never know.

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in Emma Wheeler.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

A Fairy-Tale Family

Sweet LayNasha.  She's so pretty!

Kids say a lot of crazy stuff.  I heard a ton of stuff during my internship at East Lake Elementary that made me stop, scratch me head, and say to myself, Is that really how this kid looks at life?

One time Angelica asked me, "Do you get food stamps?"

"Uh, no." I said.

"You will when you have a baby." She said and nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world to be talking about.  In her world, it is.  The kids at this inner-city school assume that everyone lives off food stamps - except rich people.

One time Terrance asked me, "Did you read the busted papers last night?!"

"Uh, no." I said yet again.  "Do you read the busted papers?"

"Heck ya!" He said.  "I gotta check to see who in my family's in there!"

A lot of people don't know that I went through culture shock during my internship.  I never knew that I could experience culture shock twenty minutes away from my house, but I did.  I spent fifteen weeks in Chattanooga's inner-city surrounded by kids who looked different than me, talked different than me, had different names than what I was used to, acted different than me and even ate different stuff than I did.

I spent fifteen weeks having conversations like the ones above every single day.

You think that I would be used to it by now, but LayNasha said something tonight at Wyldlife on the way home that blew me away for the millionth time.

"When I grow up, I want a fairy-tale family." She told me.  "I want a dog, a cat, a little boy, a little girl, and a husband."

What would it be like growing up and thinking that a traditional family is a fairy-tale? I thought to myself.

I wanted to cry for her and her dream.  I wanted to cry because she had been cheated out of fairy-tale family because of people's sin and mistakes.  I wanted to cry because I knew she hadn't seen her real dad in over six weeks.

I don't do WOW Kids or WyldLife just to give a kid a good time.  I do it for real life conversations in the back of a fifteen passenger bus at 10:00 p.m. as we're driving kids home, listening to a little girl share with me her dream for a fairy-tale family.

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in Emma Wheeler.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

Supernatural Love

Cameron (left) and Shawn (right) at church.

Working with at-risk kids, my heart has been broken many times.  I have cried and asked God, "Why?"

I hear about people who go to other countries and are astonished at the poverty that they see.  They go back to America in shock at how wealthy they are.  I've never seen third-world poverty for myself, but I experience a similar astonishment when I work with my kiddos in the inner-city, trailer parks, motels, and in homeless situations.

One example is a couple Sundays ago.  I went to go pick up Destiny, James, and Shawn for church.  There were police cars a couple houses down for who knows why.  I got out of the car and began to work my way up to their front door.  I wish I could have gotten a picture.  Me, in my grey dress and church shoes, gingerly stepping over junk that littered their front porch.

Every time I make that walk all dressed up for church, it seems so wrong.  So wrong to be dressed up when the kids that I am picking up are wearing the same clothes that they wore last Sunday.

I knocked on the door and immediately their pit bull started barking on the other side.  I don't like pit bulls.  I like nice, adorable dogs like pugs, not pits.

The door knob was gone and there was a hole about the size of an apple.  Little Shawn ran up and put his mouth up to it and said, "What?"

I leaned down next to the hole in the door.  "Hey, Shawn!  I want to take you guys to church!" I said.

"I gotta ask my mom." He ran off to ask and then ran back.  "She said no."

"Oh.  I love you, Shawn." I said.

He was quiet.

"I want to see you guys later this week, ok?" I said.

"Huh?" He said.

I leaned closer to the hole.  "I want to see you later this week!"

"Oh, ok." He said.

I wanted to cry as I walked back to the Young America van.  Talking to a first grader through a hole in the door will do that to you.

I do what I do for kids like Shawn.  Well, ultimately I do it for God, but y'all know what I mean.  I wake up early on Sundays to pick kids up for church.  I drive kids home when they throw a fit and refuse to listen.  I tell kids I love them when they're mad and they say they hate me.  I go through my clothes to give them away  to girls who don't have any.  I go to their football games on Saturday mornings and endure pouring down rain.  I spend all day Friday at their school because I want them to know that I'm there for them.

I do all this because I am driven by one thing: God's love for them.  This love is not of myself.  It's supernatural and it comes from God.  My flesh does not want to do these things and yet I love doing it because God has placed that love in my heart.

Speaking of love, I would love it if you came and helped us launch WOW Kids!  Pray about it and see where God leads you.  You never know what God has in store!

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in Emma Wheeler.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.

We LOVE East Lake

A lot of people may be hearing about WOW Kids and think it's cool and all, but don't know the whole story.  WOW Kids has sprung up from the result of two years of outreach in East Lake starting in 2010.  I was a freshman in college and I wanted to be a teacher.  I was at a conference and I happened to sit next to Ms. Rock, an inner-city middle school teacher at East Lake Academy.  I volunteered there for a whole year every Friday.  My love for East Lake grew and when I had to pick a school to intern at for fifteen weeks, I chose East Lake Elementary (You can read about that adventure here).

Honestly, we could write a book about everything that has led up to starting WOW Kids.  WOW Kids is a part of Young America Ministries and they were looking to expand into East Lake the same time we wanted to do more to help East Lake!  We would have never have gotten the building for WOW Kids if my friend Sammie hadn't posted a picture of VBS in Emma Wheeler on Facebook.  I saw that picture and went to help and there we met Brandon Bacon who helped us get the building.  God's timing has been so perfect.  He's blessed us so much.  We have partnered with the city of Chattanooga to launch WOW Kids and Hamilton County is letting us use a whole school building for tutoring!  Talk about amazing!

I wanted to post some pictures of these last two years in East Lake so everyone can look back on what led up to WOW Kids being launched.  It's been an incredible journey and I am so excited about October 16th!

Volunteering at East Lake Academy

Passing Out Clothes in East Lake Courts

My Internship at East Lake Elementary

Saturday Mentoring Trips

Missions Trip to the Atlanta Dream Center

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in Emma Wheeler.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.