good evening and welcome to alameda county is giving back program this is evening is an exciting evening because it's a story telling of two people that i feel have a story to tell an organization that has been built on a foundation of wanting to make a difference and one man that we plan to honor tonight who did make a difference have money my co host hello and sandra pitts johnson and we have mina wilson and me c robinson the story to be told tonight is amazing and less start with you mina i am so grateful for you to come to us tonight to talk about e i program and yourself basically i want people to understand your passion i know it of course but i'd like for you to just tell people what c e i is all about well  reflect back on my growing up there was always a village yeah it was a village elders nourished yes who taught us our history who gave us pride in who we are and you know really showed us our possibilities and then encouraged us they set the bar very high for us so we always had something to look forward to and to stretch your stretch goal as i look at children in communities today it seems like that village  grade and in a way we've turned our children over to the institution to raise them and the institution really is struggling just to do what it does and so we have a generation of children who don't know themselves and that hurts my heart because how can you love yourself when you are to yourself so our goal is to give children that people love knowing about themselves that's wonderful and to empower their parents to yaz a cake for them and to really build that infrastructure in the community to support kids in their academic and other achievement we focus on mostly history because that cultural binding that they know they come from a rich rich culture yes we are the only culture in america that we did not immigrate we were deported yeah because that's our reality we were disconnected f in a way i think is not true for any other race of people so our knowing ourselves is a higher level of challenge for us yeah her purpose your mission statement if i really  truly want to let everyone know that i'd like mina to give her phone number and the address where those of you out there hear her passion and know with her program it's a program if making a change and that you could be a part of to come because the passion of mina and the board and the whole initiative is going to make a change in our community mena thank you so much we're going to move on to yes please i want to express to you this is my just passed on saturday night or friday excuse me and her passion for what her mother hundred sixty nine my sister was born i was born in sixty eight and by one thousand nine hundred seventy we both were living with her permanently until i moved out of my mom's house in one thousand eighty seven so that smart oldest daughter was born cutting right up the street from the housing authority she was one of the was that helped establish the park that was across the street from the housing authority of the richmond park she was a member over fifty years at least methodist church and some of the small things i would like to share when we were at rosemont funeral home today we were talking about quilts because she was a seamstress so she made everyone's prom dresses and every in every neighborhood teenager before i ever went to the prom i knew with the dresses look like and she actually had to come over and she was a real thing to do she i want to marry yes she can look at you but there was other things in quality she had she was born in one thousand nine hundred sixty so she could look at material and she worked in a company at the time before retiring where she was able to look at the that you were going towards north star mit which you made it they had a jacob's ladder the jacob's ladder myth that she was in the right german and so they use these quilts and they make the designs in order to they had a donkey trail quilt that was the quote the kind of let you know you're not going in the right direction you're not going north and that was their way of communicating because they did not agree there was no navigation systems in that was a way of communicating with the underground world well and she understood information one day and a lot of the both have meaning to you know just a straight square quilt is for warmth but i mean they use the quilts a lot of times too to communicate with one another without even really mean th evidently who they were running from never figured it out no they never figured i was supposed to be so ignorant and she also taught us she taught my sister and i we went to many fabric stores so she taught us the texture of plants that you bark their shoes that breaks down that they used inside the fabric material and she only had an eighth grade education so everything she learned was off of experience but you know it's amazing how they say eighth grade education but she had all this knowledge about fabric before the war and the war and all of that that's muscle it and i was laughing when we were in the sixth and seventh grade she made us make all of our clothes that year and we were angry that was like punishment but no what she was actually teaching me was the value of of material things and to take pride in yes you can go use money and you can keep consumers financially still stable but she taught me how to also take care of myself and how to pass that  have three daughters two of my daughters are three they love to sew she taught us how to cut from a pattern and but it wasn't just that she taught the neighborhood children that is the united methodist church she had her own sewing class and i had many that came through i've had many friends with facebook hating me and you know you forget as you get older i didn't realize how many children every cent of yes every sunday we were part of the feed the hungry so we went to hans donut shop and also read to let all the donors and then we took half of them to the rescue mission and then we took the have to like different homes where we knew people didn't have you know food and the time i was young and i didn't understand donor to me was in the treat because it was like we had them all the time but when i think back now with the call of the donor lady when i think back now that was really something because i really didn't realize it was your mother gave you something special and you have a daughter yourself who has had some trials and tribulations and you as a strong woman if you'd like to tell the story but she still marched right she got into some trouble and one of the problems i think with parents when our children grow up with we don't let go but we kind of and i did i thought everything was ok as long as the car's at home as long as everybody stuck then when i'm at home i'm thinking everything is fine and i was really well of aid in investigating who she was hanging out with and what she was doing and actually paying attention because i was doing the everyday adult you know things that you do have the children have moved on and i go back until parents now know continue to do that where they live one thing i will say about ma ma that's what we called her even when i was ground she  was not there for her to come to my house and make sure my bed was made she looked at her bridger greater ally means she played mama she never gave up being a mom even when i became a mom thought i was grown and moved down on my own something i didn't actually develop from her to do with my own children and i would tell parents now you know my daughter she's she's incarcerated she's been incarcerated for three and a half years and it's very important that we don't lose touch inside in our young  people here in the neighborhood here in our community and something you said earlier we need to go back to be in a village when i was young everybody can spank me online and when i was in charge my mother didn't have to be sitting next to me for someone to discipline me and scold me i'm an advocate for c p s but i'm an advocate also against the because it takes some more rights away from parents but what we really need to do which is discipline our children and be able to raise them in a manner that they don't fall into this is a woman or another thing is if you take away that discipline and so they go out into the streets and they do a crime and then they get exhausted rated or go to juvenile hall then they say you should have did  better parent but you know sometimes you spank a child now c p s can come in to have mark that's funny say that because i have custody of my grass my daughter had a son he was six years old at the time when she was incarcerated  father was also incarcerated so he became in my care and that's that's one of the interesting things here i have a counseling now because i want him to grow up as a male child is much different than a female i had offered a daughter for raising a male child has been a totally different experience for me but i and i'm not making excuses for the male children of all race and color but i will say for young man it's a lot harder than it is for young women the system is set up with us to survive i think because we bear the children because a lot of times we're not coming along a singularly but when you look at a young man you you've got two arms you got two legs you can walk and talk go get a job it's not fairly easy not so i have him in counseling now because i'm trying to balance i want him to be balance and i always tell him one thing my mom used to say you cannot fall victim of your circumstances and so that's what i think we need to teach our young children we spent a lot of time on saying little johnny's father got killed  is making a difference in our community they're making a difference and making strides and you will as well here please know that you can make a difference could you give your address again yes i want to say one more thing yes recruiting for our village cultural school academy we run it during the summertime in partnership with the church and we mentor young people from eight to fifteen years old in the village environment it was amazing last year so if you'd like to participate and that i truly thank you so very much for caring because the statement that you made about young people is a statement that i hope that you carry with you as a performer with  everyone you have offered your gift that you've gotten from god to make all of us dance and be happy but your statement and your heart in wanting to just be a part of possibly me see if we can get some of the music somebody to put the music on and if you could give us just a little taste of your wonderful beautiful wonderful talent  the young people's lives because we do care and those of you out there are not here as well if you do if you do please you see is really a wonderful program a program that is going to make a difference i hope that all of you want to stay there it is out there you're out there make a difference put your foot forward do something about what we make and that's the difference while they're getting us ready niecy and mina i would like you mean to tell about yourself because millions of very modest for deeply for me is because there's a mindset now that says let's not focus on the least of our children because they're not going make it anyway we just focus we're going to use our resources on the kids who are going  it but my father was one of those kids who wasn't supposed to make it he was he said once that he would probably would have still been living in the projects of portsmouth virginia you know shooting dice if someone hadn't believed in him and there was he had a friend he was very smart he had a friend who he went to school with and he used to hang out at his friend's house and his friends father said just what are you going to do with your life like i don't know so he wouldn't talk to my grandmother now my father was oldest of and she was a single mother he was supposed to grow up and go to work mind and he thought about it his grandmother thought about it and allowed him to go to college in that day and time in that day in time w the other fabulous thing is there was a man who started a college in the community because it was no college for african americans in tide water virginia in one nine hundred thirty nine rather than go to the university of virginia they wouldn't allow  so he created a college and my mother my father with a first class and that college became norfolk state and he went first class and then he went on to the military came back and went to columbia law school and came to california got hired by governor brown jerry brown's father and he wrote the state of california equal employment opportunity law which really create opportunities for all of us but that was a little boy who were supposed to do nothing yeah so when people tell me that i'm like no because i'm the byproduct of people who were given a chance so i know no matter what you say that all of these babies how well an adaptable liar yeah if they're just given a positive no but you know what because my my baby sitter i found out later was quote unquote retarded but she had me and my younger sister told graciousness and afforded to that was given and you carried on you carry that torch because you really make a difference in your children and other people's lives