The seven-step program
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Jones with foundation's
1999 scholarship finalists
Day Ivy, Chijoke Onugha,
Gregg Taylor, Nancy Sanchez
and Karina Barba
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The combination of poverty and the horrible race relations of the time made
Deacon’s youth a real struggle.
Combine the two and, for this young man, America was not exactly the land of
opportunity it prides itself on being.
Out of a barren, desolate field, however, grew a beautiful rose.
If Deacon Jones had to go through life being shortchanged on opportunity, he was going
to do more than just grab opportunity for himself. Once he had become one of the most
famous men ever to have played the game of football, Deacon Jones knew that he had to make
sure that a new generation did not get cheated as he had.
Finances preclude Jones from giving unlimited opportunity to every child on the planet,
but he was determined to provide hope and the possibility of opportunity for as many kids
as possible.
Out of his own childhood travails sprang the seed for what would flower into the Deacon
Jones Foundation.
"I’ve always had the idea," Jones says. "When you … see
exactly how I came up, and if you were there or if you have really done some study on that
period, you can see how difficult it was to do anything. Along the way, as I broke through
the ice, as I kicked the door in, I wasn’t stupid enough not to take under
consideration what the hell I was up against and how you beat it.
"And then when it came time, I got myself in a strong financial position where I
could do something like this and really do it, because I don’t like half doing
something. I’m going at the whole problem. I feel like we have created a solution to
the whole damn problem. Now, I won’t be around when this thing really busts a
community open. But it’s the foundation of what it’s going to take to change
these inner-city communities.
"And these people that live there have to do that. So we’re training the
people that live there, directing them, bringing corporate America back to those areas,
because corporate America was there once before, and they were thriving communities. So
what we’re doing is coming back with the direction and the economic power to clean
the mess up, and we’re going to arm the people that live there, so they can clean it
up."
There is a saying that if you give a man a fish, he will eat for one day. If you teach
him how to fish, he will be able to eat for a lifetime.
The Deacon Jones Foundation aims to help inner-city children succeed in life for a
lifetime.
Some athletes, past and present, attach their name to a golf outing to raise money for
a good cause. Deacon Jones does that and more.
Some athletes, past and present, help a good cause right now. Deacon Jones does that
and more.
The Deacon Jones Foundation provides assistance long term to the children it works
with.
"When they win this scholarship, they come in as a graduate of the ninth
grade," Jones says. "Now I’ve got them three years before college.
I’ve got them four years during. That’s seven years. When they graduate from
college, they are still lifetime members of the foundation. They come back to their
communities and my arms around their neck from then on until they are carried out or
I’m carried out."
It is like getting married. A lifetime commitment. In sickness and in health. For
better or for worse.
Here is how the Deacon Jones Foundation’s seven-step program works:
Step One — Community: Corporations partner up with the Deacon Jones
Foundation and an inner-city community. This involves a long-term commitment of money and
time.
"I’m looking for Bill Gates," Jones says of the Microsoft chairman.
"He’s the kind of man I want my kids to look up to. He’s the kind of man I
want my kids to meet and know because he’s power personified, and that’s the
kind of power that they need to know how to go get to get their community the resources
that it needs. … And I shall find and meet Mr. Gates."
Step Two — Winners announced: Ninth-grade students are selected and given a
Gateway computer with full Internet access. The scholarship winners are given a $2,500
grant to be invested and monitored by the student with a personal financial adviser. At
this time the students are paired with mentors.
"There was no such thing as mentoring in my day," Jones says. "You
looked up to your brother. Everybody had brothers and sisters. That’s where you got
internal mentorship. Because we were trained to look out for each other. So that’s
how you got your mentoring. There were no programs like that, especially in the black
community. We had nothing.
"The kids that I deal with (through the Deacon Jones Foundation) mostly come from
one-family backgrounds. Some live with their grandparents. Some don’t have that
mother-father relationship. But if they do, it’s one-sided. So, what the mentor is
here, I don’t request or require Ph.D.s. I don’t request or require
psychologists. I don’t want that. I want good young businessmen who have their heads
screwed on right to be a buddy or friend to my kids. Somebody they can talk to. Somebody
that represents that female or male image that they need. And they’re there. And they
can gain confidence and trust in them, because these are lifetime relationships that
we’re building."
Step Three — Service: Each winner must give back to their communities.
During the term of their scholarship, they are required to work as volunteers within their
communities for at least one month of each summer.
Step Four — Solutions: After completing their annual community-service
requirement, the students must present an essay to the foundation’s board of
directors about their experiences as volunteers and offer solutions as to how they can
contribute to solving existing community woes.
Step Five — Job experience: Corporate partners provide internships and
employment during the full seven years of the program. In addition to learning about
corporate America, the students are also taught social poise and business protocol through
this corporate exposure.
"They require all of the exposure that they can possibly get, because life and
making it in the career world, one has to know things like playing golf," Jones says.
"You’ve got to know how to play golf. That’s just part of the business
community. And these little things these kids never see: They never go to a cocktail
party. They never know how these things relate to business. They don’t know how to
network and build contacts. Contacts play just as big a part in you getting a great job as
anything else. So all these things are what I mean by exposing my kids to that."
Step Six — Full scholarship: Each student chosen becomes eligible for a
full scholarship to any university of their choice once they reach that stage in the
program.
Step Seven — Graduation: The final step of the program for these students
is graduation from college. After earning a degree, each student is eligible for
postgraduate support from the foundation, if they so desire. Plus, if the student chooses
to enhance the inner city by starting their own business, they are eligible to receive
financial support from the foundation. Upon completion of this program, they become
permanent members of the Deacon Jones Foundation Strike Force and are encouraged to
continue on with the foundation as mentors for future students.
In other words, the seventh step never ends. For this reason, it just might be the most
important step of all. Whereas the foundation helps individual students, these students
have the opportunity to help their entire community throughout their lifetime.
"My scholarship program does not reach all the young people in the
community," Jones says. "What we do is we take the best in that environment and
we put those kids through a seven-year, seven-step program. And those kids get all this
training, all the tools, everything they need to become whatever they want.
"And then at the end of it, when all is said and done, they come back to their
community and along with the foundations and the corporations that we deal with and that
these young people train in and get advice from … it’s going to be an economic
move by these young people in their community. And they’re going to be able to manage
other people. They’re going to be able to hire other people. They’re going to be
able to raise the economic level of their area.
"These kids are going to go away for seven years, and they’re going to come
back and they’re going to touch the heart and soul of a great deal of people. …
Over a period of time you will see how this thing catches on and how it will choke poverty
right out of existence."
The overall vision — The land of opportunity: Right now the Deacon Jones
Foundation is in its infancy. Only a handful of students have begun the seven-step
program. Everything has to start somewhere. Every forest starts with a single tree. That
single tree starts with a single seed.
In the case of Deacon Jones’ vision, it is starting with an idea. It is starting
with opportunity being presented to the community. And no one knows more about the
importance of being given an opportunity than he does.
For so long he was denied the opportunity he provides for his kids. For so long he
fought for his opportunity. And when opportunity presented itself, he grabbed it with a
vengeance.
The year was 1961. It was a time when black athletes realized there were only so many
opportunities for a person of color to make it with a pro football team. Deacon and his
brother met with a scout from the Los Angeles Rams in a New Orleans airport. They were not
out to get a signing bonus. They had no demands. They merely had a goal. They merely
sought opportunity.
"Our mission was to get the signature on the paper," Deacon says. "We
didn’t go in there with no negotiating, no numbers in mind. We just wanted the
signature on the paper."
Opportunity wasn’t the only elusive target for Deacon as a child. Options were
almost nonexistent. As he saw it, there was but one road out of town.
"I had one dream when I was a kid," he says. "I was going to be a
professional athlete. My whole motivation was that. My whole thinking was that. My whole
commitment was that, and I have often wondered if I hadn’t become one, what the hell
would I have done because I put all my eggs in that basket. That happened because I was
without choices. I had no choices. I had no direction. I had nobody who had any
sensitivity toward a poor ghetto kid who had a lot of potential. So, yes, that played a
heavy part in reminding me of my duty as a human being to try to do something about the
problem."
The early returns are encouraging.
Gregg Taylor, one of the initial students to be selected for a scholarship by the
Deacon Jones Foundation, is asked what he hopes to do someday when he graduates from
college.
"There are a lot of things I want to do," Taylor says. "I tell myself I
want to be in the film industry — directing (or) producing. Maybe writing. Maybe an
attorney. I don’t really know. Those are my ideas."
Options, options, options.
In some environments, providing a light at the end of the tunnel — even if it is
far, far off in the distance, even if the light is something people can barely make out
— is a tremendous victory.
Jones says, "Our kids (in the inner city) don’t have nothing. … When you
live in the hellhole in the ghetto, you don’t have dreams about nothing."
That may be changing. As one applicant wrote in one of the essay questions on the
Deacon Jones Foundation scholarship application earlier this year: "I can do anything
I set my mind and heart to."
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