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The Undiscovered Path: How one act of kindness altered the future of an entire community - YouTube
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- [Police Radio] Taking
fire, we are taking fire
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- [Woman Reporter] The latest
incident ended in assault
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- [Male Reporter] More
than 30 people wounded...
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- The only stories that I knew
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about the types of neighborhoods
where we were going
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were things that I saw on the news.
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- [Reporter] Acts of crime committed
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by illegal immigrants...
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- [Woman Reporter] Many are
scared to leave their homes...
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- [Reporter] Hopelessness
in the community...
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- That it wasn't a safe place.
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Okay.
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So my name is Melinda Hollandsworth.
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I grew up just white America.
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I didn't really know much about diversity.
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Everyone around me was
pretty much the same as me.
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- My name is Jim Hollandsworth.
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There were a few folks in my high school
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who were different than me
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but I didn't really know 'em well.
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My world was this bubble.
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This white, kinda church
going, Christian bubble.
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- We definitely lived an ordinary life.
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Things were pretty easy for us
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and I remember we were just
sitting around one night
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after dinner and we were like,
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"What are we doing in our community?"
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- [Jim] Melinda and I both
were having this faith crisis.
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A little bit of, hey,
is this all there is?
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- But I remember we just sorta felt stuck
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that night Like we wanted to do something
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but we really didn't think
there was need in our community.
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About a year later,
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we signed up to be part of
a Christmas sponsorship.
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Jim and I volunteered
to deliver the gifts.
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When we drove into the neighborhood
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it just felt different.
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The colors were vibrant.
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There was a lot of music playing.
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It was unfamiliar
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and so out of my norm
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but then also there was a
great sense of community.
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Like the people were all
involved in each others' lives.
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We met one family, the Ramirez family,
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and all the kids were there.
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- The sixth grade daughter in this family,
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her name was Maria,
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she asked us,
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"Hey, can you help with our homework
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"because my mom and dad
don't speak English?"
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- I love to see Friday folders.
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I open it up and realize
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they're already failing
everything in school.
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Older siblings had already
dropped out of high school.
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The kids who were in middle school
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had these big hopes and
dreams for their lives
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but they didn't have a
role model to look up to.
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And I had just assumed
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that if someone dropped out of high school
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it was because
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that was just what they wanted to do.
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It never occurred to me
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that maybe there was a time
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that they wanted something
different for their lives
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but just the difficulty of the
path knocked them off course.
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- And this was like this light bulb of
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well that's something that we can do.
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Melinda was a teacher.
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How easy is that?
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And then we said, "Well okay
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"then we'll just do homework
for two afternoons a week."
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And that's when we met Sophia
was in the spring of 2010.
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- We were doing homework
in the neighborhood
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and Sophia one day said to me ya know,
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"Ms. Melinda when are you guys leaving?
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"That's what people do here.
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"They come and they stay for a while
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"and they leave and we
never see them again."
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And it was like punch to the face question
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because I could think of times
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when I had been the person who left.
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(sirens)
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- [Jim] And then a shooting happened
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in the mobile home park.
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We heard that a drug
deal had kinda gone bad.
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- And we got in the car that day
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and I remember looking at Jim
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with panic thinking, "Get me out of here"
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cause it was just terrifying.
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It was more than I could
really handle at the time.
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I remember we sat there
and Jim looked at me
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and he said,
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"I think that we either
choose to do something
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"or we leave and we never come back."
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We sat a stop sign.
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Staring at that stop sign.
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It was uncomfortable.
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It was out of my comfort zone.
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- [Jim] I had a job, we
had a little baby at home.
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- As much as it was a
terrifying moment for us,
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it was also the moment where
we said, "Okay, we're in."
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- We just know these
people are now our friends.
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Let's try to figure this out.
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The very next week,
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the property manager came to us and said,
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"Hey, the home where the
shooting happened is now vacant.
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"Do you guys want it to
do your homework program?"
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So we turned this mobile
home into a community center
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like a classroom to try to
impact that graduation rate.
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- We've seen how the
role models have changed.
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Now when you talk to the kids
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they talk about where kids are in college
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or what the older kids are doing.
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And we're not the role models.
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It's the kids who've grown up
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and they've blazed a new path
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for the younger generation
in their neighborhood.
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(kids shouting and laughing)
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My world is bigger now than it was before.
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It's normal to have
friends who live in homes
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that might look a little
bit different than ours.
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It's normal to have friends
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that might speak a different
language in their house.
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It's more whole because of the friendships
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with the people in the neighborhood.
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And the people who've become family to us.
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When I was in the hospital for eight weeks
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before my son Will was born,
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it was Maria, Alaina and Ortencia who came
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and visited me in the hospital
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and sat with me on one of the long days.
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I remember in that moment thinking,
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"What if my being afraid had
prevented me from knowing
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and loving these people who
are part of our community?"
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- If we give ourselves to others,
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it creates meaningful relationships.
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It creates opportunity
for things to happen
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that would never happen by
living in a safe little bubble.
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We didn't sit down and
write out a strategic plan.
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It was just an organic thing.
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We made a ton of mistakes,
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but along that journey
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we started to kinda figure things out.
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- It's definitely been difficult
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and bumpy at times but
I would never go back
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and do anything differently.
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They have so many gifts
and talents and resources.
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Their lives have changed my
life and my family's life.
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- [Jim] As human beings,
right, we're all connected.
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Why wouldn't we want
to make our community,
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as a whole,
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a more meaningful place to live?
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And we're gonna find true joy and meaning
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in building relationships
with others who are different.
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(soft music)
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