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Inmates help kids stay on course
Ex-football star wants to inspire young minds
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
Fifteen at-risk kids from the Warren area completed a four-week program this week that exposed them to life- changing lessons taught by eight to 10 inmates at the Trumbull Correctional Institution.
The program was through Deryck Toles’ Inspiring Minds organization. Toles, 29, a Warren Harding High School and Penn State University graduate who also played football in the NFL, said the class was the second one to participate in the sessions, known as The Youth for the Nation.
Toles said the sessions, conducted with an inmate group known as Links, took place for the second-consecutive summer, but it is being expanded to once every three months starting in October.
Over the last four weeks, boys and girls age 15 to 18 visited the prison for several hours once per week to participate in a variety of activities.
The kids are not matched up with an inmate, but they do interact with them in a group setting and have a chance to ask them any question they want, Toles said. Inmates also make presentations to the kids.
“They talk about what they did to get into their situation,” Toles said of the inmates.
Toles, whose organization is headquartered at the Warren YMCA downtown, said some young people glorify prison, so showing them what it is truly like opens their eyes.
“Then they realize it’s something they don’t want,” he said.
“They think that’s cool,” Toles said of illegal activity and violence, “so to hear from a 19-year-old [inmate] that it’s not cool, that it’s cool to go to school, to hear that from someone who’s there, it makes a huge impact than just hearing it from your parents and teachers all the time.”
This program is different from Scared Straight, Toles said, in that Youth for the Nation is “about relationships” rather than just scaring kids away from prison. Youth for the Nation involves a lot of dialogue between the kids and inmates.
“One of the most powerful things I have heard is, ‘My life is not over,’” Toles said of comments one of the students made after participating in Youth for the Nation.
“Some kids think their life is over, but to meet someone in prison for 30 years to life, they tell them you still have an opportunity to be successful, to get your diploma, go to college, start a family,” Toles said.
The kids selected for the program are referred by police, juvenile court, schools and the YMCA, he said.
The prison helps with some of the costs of the program, but Inspiring Minds also receives funding from Warren’s Weed and Seed program, which is in its first year.
One indication that the Inspiring Minds is working is that every senior who participated is going on to college, Toles said.
Kids can begin to participate in Inspiring Minds in elementary school. At the high school level, the program takes them on four to five college visits and introduces them to four to five business professionals.
Inspiring Minds operates mostly in Trumbull County but also is expanding into Mahoning County, Toles said.