Hope, self-worth, and trust. Those things can seem impossibly out-of-reach, or even alien, to people living with things like homelessness, addiction, incarceration, or abuse. In those situations, one setback can send a delicately balanced life into chaos or desperation.

That’s why Project Legacy works hour-by-hour and year-after-year with some of Rochester’s most in-need youth and young adults.

The organization’s services include paying for things like tuition, rent, and groceries, but that covers only a sliver of its influence on participants. Healing Circles and study hours are complemented by peer mentoring, housing, and mental health programs, among others. Creating a nurturing environment requires a comprehensive approach.

Project Legacy’s mission to provide hope, connections and support to youth ages 17-24 who are refugees, homeless, formerly gang-involved or recently incarcerated.

“You have to live and breathe it and you have to be 200 percent committed to these kids,” says Karen Light Edmonds, co-founder and executive director of Project Legacy. “It's not a nine-to-five. It's not just an after school program. It's not short term.”

Study tables on Monday and Tuesday nights start with a meal, then transition into studying with tutors in math and humanities. After, food is divvied up and sent home. A dedicated crew of volunteers supplies home-cooked meals.

Three Healing Circles during the week give participants a safe zone to speak freely among people who understand their perspective. Each circle includes a pediatrician, social worker, or therapist who understands racial dynamics and trauma.

“I feel like it's reaching a lot of kids that a lot of the older programs in town just aren't reaching,” says Alysha Rae Carlisle, an alumnas who now serves as Project Legacy’s social work assistant. “It's a place where everybody and everyone has potential and everyone has power that's probably just not tapped into yet, and we're here to help them.”

Project Legacy alumnus Alysha Rae Carlisle (center) now serves as a mentor to local youth.

‘You can turn this around’

What has become Project Legacy started with Karen and three girls whom she met wile working in the school district. She held a yoga class with time built in to talk about families and relationships. Over that first year, three students later grew to a hundred.

That is where Akoy Marial, sophomore at St. Cloud State preparing for her nursing school entrance exams, met Karen. Her oldest sister was part of the yoga group and invited her along. She remembers Karen being nice, welcoming, and, above all, loving.

But just as male gang members — brothers, cousins, and uncles of the girls she started with — began seeking out the program, turbulent organizational disagreements led it shutting down for a year.

“I'll tell you, during that year, there were kids who crashed and burned and they still talk about it today. I just visited one of them in jail,” says Edmonds.

Unconditional care is not checked at the jail doors, though. She told another young man in jail executing his sentence in lieu of years of parole, “I love you. I know your heart. I know you're a good person. I believe that. You're not the worst thing you've ever done. That's not who you are. You got off track. You can turn this around.”

That’s a departure from society’s normal message to felons.

“We don't care about that felony, we care about what you're going to do going forward. We care about what you're going to do to that person coming up behind you. How are you going to help that person?” says Karen. “In order to do that, you need to heal that hole in your heart, you need to start to believe that you are a worthwhile person.”

Building a foundation

John Edmonds, co-founder of Project Legacy, asserts that success is often equated to being able to leave a legacy for the next generation.

“For the disenfranchised, they have been denied the opportunity to make connections, to develop access or to have access, and denied the ability to accrue property,” explains John.

To break that cycle, Project Legacy creates the right circumstances.

Ngor Barnaba is a student and forward on the basketball team at Talladega College in Alabama. He joined the group in middle school - the first boy to do so. Today he is studying communications and sociology.

“Getting in contact with Karen was actually the best thing for us because she had access to the things we needed and different outlets to help us out,” says Barnaba.

For his group of friends, Healing Circles were safe zones to express their emotions. Traveling with Project Legacy, he said, was perspective-broadening. During Marial’s junior year, she joined a trip to California for a Homeboy Industries conference. The following year, the group went to Yellowstone National Park. The region left an impression: she wants to practice nursing in Wyoming after graduating.

Dreams like that require support, though.

“You need a foundation. And I never really had that, growing up anyway,” says Zach Wilson, professional carpenter and Project Legacy alumnus. “I never really had role models in my life to see what would happen if I continue school. You’ve got social media, you’ve got TV and stuff, but you need something personal, to see to see for yourself. I never really had that, so I was just kind of out there.”

When he needed help, Project Legacy appeared on the third page of a Google search. Karen and he were already Facebook friends. He attended a circle, and kept up with the group.

“You don't run into these kind of situations, really at all. It's so rare. Like when she first met me it felt like she knew me. Damn near all my life. It was pretty crazy,” says Wilson.

He enrolled in college (the first of his family to do so), got a steady job, and had a car. When his old friends started commenting on how he’d changed, Wilson knew he had to bring them into the fold.

“You start building yourself a foundation to help another person get to the way you are,” Wilson reasons.

Coming full circle

Wilson isn’t alone in that belief.

“I always thought about helping the next person behind you. That's what I've always gone by. And that's what Project Legacy goes by as well, always helping the next person. No matter how they are, where they come from, what they're going through. You always want to help out the people,” says Marial.

Even Barnaba, set to pursue a professional basketball career after graduating, plans on circling back to make sure the next generation is taken care of, as a social worker.

In the last month, grants have made it possible for the organization to hire three new social work assistants. Two of them, including Manal Imad Yousef Abbadi, are alumni of the program.

“I plan to stick around and help out with Project Legacy as much as I can for as long as I can. For however long Project Legacy is up and going, I plan to be here,” says Carlisle.

At 7 a.m. on Tuesday, November 12, Project Legacy’s second Rise Up and Shine breakfast takes place at the International Events Center, 7333 Airport View Drive Southwest. The event features free breakfast and highlights the accomplishments of Project Legacy youth. Follow this link to learn more.

Bryan Lund is a Rochester writer, journalist, and Project Legacy mentor.

Editor’s note: We want to thank our members for nominating Project Legacy as our featured nonprofit for the fall. It was with their support that this article was published.