YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A city-based nonprofit works with young men, providing mentorship, empowerment and scholarships.
“The Kool Boiz Foundation is a 501(C)(3), and we are dedicated to empowering young men of color in the community of Youngstown,” said Scott Washington, organization vice president.
It offers mentoring, scholarships and youth empowerment conferences, including weekly meetings with middle school students at two schools in the city.
That started through a connection with the United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley, which provides report card mentoring.
Mentoring
Each Friday, Kool Boiz volunteers spend lunchtime with about 20 boys each at Youngstown Community School and Rayen Early College Middle School. They talk with the students – mostly seventh and eighth graders, with a few sixth graders – about problems or concerns and then move to the weekly lesson.
The schools select students to participate in the program.
Participants might have good grades but struggle with behavior challenges, or they might demonstrate exemplary behavior but could use an extra push with academics.
One way Kool Boiz Foundation volunteers connect with the young men in the programs is commonality. Washington said the principal at one of the schools believed the organization would be successful working with students because Kool Boiz volunteers look like the students.
Washington agreed.
“I was one of those kids that if I had somebody that went through the fire, the same fires that I had gone through, I would probably be a little bit more receptive to just hearing them out,” he said.
Volunteers build relationships with students, talking to them about difficult issues they’re navigating and offering guidance.
The group also takes students on field trips in and outside the city and bases many of those destinations on student input and interest.
“So what we do is we try to find what the kids may want to get into,” Washington said. “So if a kid tells us he wants to be an engineer, we’ll find a local engineer that will let us come in and have the kids talk to him, or something of that nature. So we do different field trips around the kids’ wants, what they want to be.”
The Kool Boiz Foundation was established 10 years ago, and this year it’s opening a branch in Columbus. To mark its anniversary, the foundation launched a fundraiser, asking supporters to donate $10 per month – less than a coffee habit, Washington pointed out.
Kool Boiz is funded through grants, sponsors and donations.
The name stems from members’ school days. Foundation board members grew up in the city, and many attended school together. Washington attended the former Cleveland Elementary, Princeton Middle schools and graduated from the former South High. He went on to Ohio University and began a career in the insurance industry after graduation.
The name comes from what they called themselves in school. The friends excelled in academics, athletics and other activities. Their connections help them bring people in various fields and professions in to speak to young people.
Empowerment Events
The group hosts a monthly youth empowerment event at its Boardman office, as well as an annual daylong conference at Youngstown State University. The monthly meetings started as virtual events during Covid then moved to an in-person format. Topics may include financial literacy, art, mental health and others.
Speakers include athletes, business people and even Jake from State Farm. One of the organization’s volunteers works at State Farm and worked with the company to arrange the spokesman’s virtual presentation to the young men.
Those events occur on Saturdays, and the foundation offers incentives – from cash to prizes – for active participation.
“What we’re working on now is we’re trying to continue the pipeline from eighth grade on into high school,” Washington said. “Because, ultimately, what we want is our kids that have come all the way through our program to be the ones that receive the scholarship when they get out of 12th grade.”
Scholarship Recipient
Konner Hines, a second-year marketing and international business major at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, is one of the Kool Boiz Foundation scholarship recipients.
He learned about the foundation when he was a Boardman High School student, attended an event and got involved. He’s grateful for the $4,000 scholarship but said being involved with Kool Boiz gave him a sense of community. He hopes to help other young men through the foundation like his mentors helped him.
“One of my profound mentors, Kenny Boone, has been with me every single way, from this step of me deciding what college I was going to to getting there,” Hines said. He has always been a source when I needed him. And it’s really just a great foundation for coming-of-age young men to sort of enter into this world they don’t really know about.”
Boone sits on the Kool Boiz Foundation Board of Directors. Hines said Boone helped him navigate the college environment.
“He wasn’t here physically, but whenever I called him about certain social situations, every single step of the way he has been a light, a lighting source,” Hines said.
Pictured at top: Scott Washington, Kool Boiz Foundation vice president.