PORTSMOUTH, Va. — A national organization has recognized one Portsmouth nonprofit for making strides against gun violence.
Darrell Redmond grew up in the London Oaks area of Portsmouth, a neighborhood that is no stranger to violence.
"If you made it out of London Oaks, you felt like you made it in the community," Redmond said.
He was no stranger to crime and built a rap sheet that sent him to prison for 20 years.
When Redmond returned home in 2019, he knew something had to change.
"They had taken away all the things the youth could actually do inside the community and then they actually had a fence around it. So, day one when I came home, it actually reminded me of prison," he said.
Now, he said he sees the influence he has on the neighborhood he grew up in and wants to use it for good.
"I actually get a thrill out of being able to go in the community that I, at one time, was a part of the problem to become part of the solution," Redmond said.
So, he started the nonprofit "Give Back 2 Da Block" to change that.
"We knew we didn’t have the capacity to service the whole city, so we took a focal point," Redmond said.
That focal point is London Oaks.
Redmond said in 2020, that area alone saw around 16 or 17 shootings.
Between 2021 and 2022, he said the neighborhood went a 16-month span without a fatal shooting.
The national organization Cities United took notice and late last year, they awarded them for "work on the front lines to create safe, healthy, and hopeful communities for young black men and boys, their families and communities. We honor you for interrupting the cycle of community violence and re-imagining public safety."
"We did that by actually addressing the root cause of a lot of violence, which is mental health. Something that is shied upon inside underserved communities," Redmond said.
After a national training, he said they came back and got to work.
"After we got trained, we came there bringing mental health resources and actually engaging people that were inside that community, that were pillars in that community and allow them to take back their own community," he said.
Between yoga instructors, after-school programs and Parks and Recreation coming in with someone well-known in the neighborhood, Redmond said it has made a difference.
"The root cause of violence is underlying trauma that hasn't been addressed. So, a lot of times in communities, people go through physical abuse, mental abuse, social abuse," he said. "Me, I speak from a personal perspective because that was my life."
He said they do things like "thinking reports," to try to get to the root cause of why someone acted a certain way. For example, if a group of kids got into a fight.
"...We get them to write down what was their thoughts, what was all of their thoughts before they got into the fight, what was their feelings, what was their high-risk level," he said. "Sometimes being able to see what you went through physically is a way to actually transform."
He said they also take kids and teens from the neighborhood to different places, to expose them to environments outside of London Oaks.
They just took a group of kids to Virginia Beach and he said you would’ve thought he’d taken them down to Miami.
"It changes their mindset," he said. "Sometimes when they’re in these small places, they believe and they are willing to die for something because they feel like this is all that they have."
Redmond said he has two new projects coming up.
One is called "Scared to Death."
Remember the show "Scared Straight" from the early 2000s where teens were shown what prison is like? Redmond said now, because so many kids know someone who is or has been incarcerated, the concept is outdated.
Instead, he wants to take them to a funeral home.
"Allow them to see somebody who is actually dead. To get them to understand the effect. A lot of times people don't understand the effect because they are reacting instead of responding," Redmond said.
He's also planning a trip to Florida at the end of the summer for 25 kids.
The catch is, they have to submit an essay on how gun violence has affected them or what they think about gun violence. Of the kids chosen, they'll sign a contract of sorts saying they will do a certain number of community service and avoid posting anything negative on social media for the whole summer.
If they succeed, they get to go to Disney World before school starts.
He said since their focus is on London Oaks, one of their goals is to expand their work by "zip code hiring," meaning there would be a network of respected people in different neighborhoods who come together to compare what’s working and what isn’t.
"A whole city can be tackled if they are trained correctly," Redmond said. "To be able to make it work as a network, even though you have somebody who is credible in this neighborhood and that neighborhood and that neighborhood and doing the work, they're all trained. Once a month, they get together and talk about the strategy of what did or didn't work."
Redmond said he wants to see this network grow throughout the city he cares so much about.
"I would say to anybody who has any type of credibility in your community that your lived experience matters. You are the solution," he said. "A lot of people get books and do studies and I tell people that I am the book."
To get involved in the Disney World essay contest, email your essay to Giveback2dablockva@gmail.com.
If you're interested in sponsoring the trip, use that same email address to donate via PayPal or on CashApp via @giveback2dablock.