Submitted image Some of the boys and organizers of the Kool Boiz were photographed while on a trip. The adults in the photo are, from left, Scott Washington, Germaine McAlpine, Martice Waters, Ronnell Elkins and Kenny Boone.

YOUNGSTOWN — Bruce Rushton and Scott Washington were popular kids at South High School in the late 1980s, not just because they were successful athletes, but because they were among a group of Kool Boiz — the name they developed along with others to identify themselves.

Washington said recently that high school groups “were kind of in style,” so some South High guys came up with the Kool Boiz name in 10th grade as a way to create “a group of likeminded kids who wanted to do the same thing, wanted to represent the same thing.”

Though the Kool Boiz was a social club, it represented something “kind of uncommon” — a group of young black juveniles who were on the National Honor Society, the honor roll, an athlete and “popular kids within that whole class,” he said.

The Kool Boiz took their popularity a step further by organizing parties where they would raise money for things like senior trips, Washington said.

“And because we were either well-known athletes or just popular kids or smart, we figured out, ‘Let’s throw a party. Let’s raise some money and let’s see what happens,'” Washington said. “And lo and behold, we ended up being able to raise money,” he said. “We ended up being able to do certain things — buy jackets, buy coats and hats and other stuff, just being cool, as well as help fund our senior trip.”

Washington and Rushton went to kindergarten together.

“We’ve been friends ever since then and have continued on until now,” Washington said.

Fast forward to 10 years ago, and “Bruce (Rushton) says to me, ‘Hey, I want to do something for the community. I want to do something for these kids who need our help,'”Washington said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I don’t know how we are going to do it, but ultimately I want to take advantage of the name — the Kool Boiz.”

Washington said it was decided to call the group the Kool Boiz Foundation “because if we can garner any traction, people probably still know us from — at least people from our class and maybe a little bit after — know us as Kool Boiz, always a positive association – why not capitalize on that name and just see what we can do?”

The Kool Boiz Foundation is celebrating its 10th year of working in the Youngstown City Schools, in the Kool Boiz office on Market Street in Boardman and elsewhere to provide boys and young men with training to help them be successful in life.

“We had no idea what nonprofits looked like, but that was something we were going to do, and we were going to figure it out,” Washington said. “We are pretty new to this from a non profit aspect, but smart enough, passionate enough about what we want to do to figure out how to get these things done,” he said.

Washington is vice president of the foundation and a sales manager for Allstate Insurance Co.

He said the group understood that, “It has to be us to do this kind of work. We can’t continue to complain about the young kids if we don’t help them. How can we say ‘Pull your pants up’ or care about education if we don’t really show them how to do that type of stuff, right?

“We can’t let TV teach our kids. We can’t let outside social media teach our kids. We thought it was important enough for us to get in and do that nitty gritty work that we know works because we have all been down this road,” Washington said.

“You always tell these kids ‘Listen, I’ve been your age before. You’ve never been my age. We already know kind of what is going on.’ We kind of take that approach with these young men we mentor and empower.”

Rushton, who is CEO of Business Growth Coaching and Consulting in the Columbus area, said the key feature of the foundation is mentorship.

“We target boys and young men of color to provide them with mentoring because we believe that by providing that mentorship piece, it is going to help them change their mindsets and behaviors and be able to find an appropriate path to success for their life.

“So oftentimes when you have kids who grow up in this type of environment in the City of Youngstown where there is a lot of poverty, the educational system is not one of the best. There are a lot of challenges these kids face, so we try to help stand in the gap of some of those challenges these kids face through our mentoring programs, through our empowerment conferences.”

Empowerment conferences are held annually to “focus on exploring long-term success through education, leadership, life skill and hard work,” the foundation’s web page states. “Our goal is to give young men an opportunity to hear about and reflect on what’s possible through thought-provoking interactive discussions and exercises.'”

SCHOLARSHIPS

Another key area is the scholarships the foundation gives out, which go to “African American boys who plan to pursue advanced education after high school. The scholarship will be awarded to students who attend an accredited two-year or four-year college or university or enroll in a skilled trade or credential program,” the website states.

Last weekend, Rushton, Washington and others gathered at the foundation’s offices to award a $4,000 scholarship to Johnathan Stanford, 17, who graduated last weekend from Boardman High School. He will attend Kent State University this fall and study computer engineering technology.

Stanford attended his first empowerment conference at age 12.

“I have learned so much from it — from financial literacy to paying for my future. It’s definitely been very beneficial for me.”

He said he thinks the empowerment conferences have been the biggest benefit, “where we get a lot of kids my age to meet up and discuss important topics.”

The foundation’s leaders also go into two of the Youngstown city schools every Friday during the school year — Youngstown Community School on Essex Street and Rayen Early College Middle School on Williamson Avenue — to give lessons and take them on tours of area industries to help them discover what type of work interests them.

“We spend time teaching them social stuff too,” Washington said. “As we teach them on these Fridays, being that we all pretty much have a background in sports, the males in the foundation, it’s an easy way for us to kind of connect with most of the kids we deal with. We take them to sporting events, things of that nature. YSU does a really great job of donating tickets to us for all of the basketball games, the football games. That is a component of outside time,” Washington said.

The group took the kids to the Ohio State Spring Football Game recently and added the educational component of a trip to the State Capitol as well to teach them some history, Washington said.

The group also hosts monthly empowerment conferences at the foundation’s offices, where speakers talk to the kids about jobs in various types of industries.

“We had representatives from Chase Bank come and talk to the kids about financial literacy,” Washington said.

About 20 kids usually attend the monthly empowerment conferences. In many instances, the connections the kids make result in summer jobs for them.

SURPRISE

Rushton said he was surprised to discover when he graduated from South High School in 1989 and went to college at The Ohio State University that he was behind others in some areas.

“When I was growing up in Youngstown, I didn’t realize until I got to Ohio State, I didn’t realize just how far behind I was academically and from a social standpoint. I learned pretty quickly that I was pretty far behind. So when I think about these young men and being able to provide them with some support and some realistic insight into what they are going to be facing, it goes back to my experience in leaving Youngstown and going off to college.”

Rushton said the foundation tells the newest generation of Kool Boiz to “understand that they shouldn’t play the background so much. You have to embrace going out and trying to be excellent and be out front and be a leader because that is going to push them, compel them and get them out of their comfort zone.

“Sometimes when you put yourself out there like that, now we’re talking about growing and changing.”

He added, “There are a lot of really successful men who have come out of Youngstown. So we try to expose them to those individuals and really use those stories to help this generation see the path. If all you ever did was look around Youngstown, never got outside of the city and you have come up through the school system, sometimes you don’t see a clear path to success. That’s just the reality of it. So for us, we’re all about showing those paths.”

POSITIVE IMPRESSION

Kool Boiz board member Kenny Boone said he finds it important to help the boys and young men learn how to present themselves in a positive way. “We are doing this to expose to them the right way to introduce yourself, to make yourself be seen and heard. We want to teach the kids some of the things the schools may not be giving them and to be able to see the value in themselves because we all have value,” Boone said.

“We want to pull those things out of the kids so that they are confident. They walk confidently, whatever their approach may have been to education before, with our mentorship, prayerfully they can start looking at it a different way. Because once these middle school kids get to high school, it’s another ball game. Things start moving at a more rapid pace. Things change and they have to be able to adapt to those changes,” he said.

Boone said the Kool Boiz has mentored more than 1,000 kids over the 10 years Kool Boiz has existed in Youngstown.

Because of changes at the federal level of government, the Kool Boiz Foundation has launched a new program to ensure the funding it has used in the past to provide scholarships, empowerment conferences and other opportunities will continue to be available.

Washington said the foundation is asking people to donate $10 per month “in the spirit of a cup of coffee a day. Whatever it is you might spend a little on, here’s $10 a month, which is kind of in line with our 10-year anniversary.

“If we can tap 1,000 people or even more, I know most of us on the board and those who support us, we’ve got a thousand people who probably spend more than $10 a month on something they like to do. So why not use that or change that to some community efforts? That is what that campaign is about from the start of this year to the end of this year,” Washington said.

“We just hope we can find some people who want to share in a philanthropic area that we do and help the community a little bit more.” Details on the program are explained on the Kool Boiz website.

Among the ways it raised money last year was the Empowerment Golf Outing, which raised more than $8,300; and the 8th Annual Holiday Party With A Purpose, which raised more than $5,200.

Rushton has lived in Columbus on and off since he graduated from high school, and the organization recently started to form a Kool Boiz group in Columbus.

Washington said the goal is to “expand into another place where we have some ties, and we might be able to broaden what we do so that we might have more resources down in Columbus than we do here.” He said the organization wants to “tap into the energy of like minded people in Columbus.”