It was 2013 when Boy With a Ball Global found a new home in metro Atlanta, a city unique in its identity. Atlanta, known as the city in the forest, home to the world’s largest airport, a major film industry, a place for artists, for athletes, for families, for many, became home to us, too. Soon, Global felt that passion that coincides with the next great idea and knew that for all that Atlanta is, it’s broken. Backed with the drive that stems from the success of building up local teams and driven leaders, Boy With a Ball decided to be both globally and locally minded in this new city.
Atlanta’s own, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was and is an inspiration for BWAB’s efforts in the world and the idea of modeling his work in his neighborhoods, in his schools, in his hometown was such an empowering one. With that in mind, Boy With a Ball Global hoped that the Atlanta team would be developed into a flagship model of what a local BWAB team could be. We hoped, and still hope, to create such a team- a team that would be a training base used to launch and strengthen other local teams across the globe.
It was 2014 when Boy With a Ball Atlanta launched, and in its three years, their story of hard work, of genuine progress, has been written. After establishing a formal partnership with Atlanta Public Schools with the help of board member Leslie Grant, BWAB’s Velocity Cross Age Mentoring Dropout Prevention Program was launched at Maynard H. Jackson High School and Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in 2014. This program has trained over XX high school mentors to build life-changing mentoring relationships with XX middle school mentees, lifting both mentors and mentees toward graduating from high school and going on to college.
In January of 2016, Love Your City, BWAB’s Community Development Program, launched, partnering with the Westside’s City of Refuge organization. On a weekly basis, volunteers from Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta, Georgia State, Georgia Tech and Emory join BWAB Atlanta to flood the streets of our City of Refuge. Walkthroughs commence every Saturday, first building deep connections with the residents of the community. Then, create paths to forming one-to-one mentoring relationships and supportive small groups. All of their efforts are for the purpose of working with City of Refuge to see the neighborhood residents woven together into life-giving relationships that help them make powerful strides toward reaching their dreams in an area where doing so has been extremely challenging.
And now, it is 2017, and, currently, Boy With a Ball Atlanta is engaged in a campaign to build out the organization’s capacity including hiring a City Director and Program Director as well as recruiting funders, BWAB Atlanta local board members and corporate advisory board members, local team members and volunteers. If you are interested in joining with us in any of the these capacities or know someone who might be interested, please contact us at info@boywithaball.com.
