Out of Bushwick

On July 31, 2008 CNN's Soledad O'Brien traveled with 30 Brooklyn schoolchildren on a volunteer mission to serve the impoverished and orphans in South Africa. These teenagers are mostly from Bushwick, Brooklyn -- a community of about 109,000 people located five miles from Manhattan. For most, it’s their first time away from home. The children on this trip to South Africa are what educators and social workers call "at-risk" -- at risk of having babies as teenagers; at risk of never finishing high school or achieving their dreams; at risk of never knowing the world beyond their neighborhood.

Bushwick is mostly a working class neighborhood where families have often struggled. For years it was a community with a thriving drug trade, severely under-achieving schools, extreme poverty and a staggering rate of teenage pregnancy. It was ravaged by fires and looting during the summer of 1977 and hit hard by the crack epidemic in the 1980s. The community is recovering now, but half of the children under age 18 still live below the poverty line. A quarter of the adults never make it past the ninth grade and more than half never graduate from high school.

The South Africa trip is Malaak Compton-Rock's brainchild -- to broaden the horizons of young teens and give them perspective on their own lives. These 30 children, between the ages of 12 to 16, have been paired up with college-aged mentors and brought to South Africa by Malaak Compton-Rock, the wife of comedian Chris Rock. She brought them to volunteer -- to serve the impoverished and the AIDS orphans South Africa, a country with the highest HIV-infected population in the world; a country with 1.4 million AIDS orphans. Compton-Rock has carved her own niche in community service. She often quotes her mentor Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund: "Service is the rent we pay for living."

I believe by traveling you open up your life and your mind. You no longer think locally, you start to think globally and internationally, outside the confinements of your neighborhood and it gives you a sense of confidence. In the United States, even in Bushwick, we have certain services that we need to understand and need to take advantage of. I am talking about things that we take for granted like access to free public education, food, knowledge and the ability to move up the ladder in life – things reserved for only the rich in most developing countries.

When the Bushwick travelers returned to the U.S. their journey did not end. Malaak Compton-Rock has required all of the children selected for the trip to sign one-year contracts to become "global ambassadors."
As ambassadors they are required to tell their friends and neighbors about their experiences -- through writing, blogging, photographs and speeches. What did they learn and discover about themselves, and the world? All the kids have been asked to blog about the joys and the challenges, the things they learned and the disappointments. The Bushwick teens came to make a difference in the lives of these vulnerable kids in South Africa. It will be equally interesting to see how South Africa's children make a difference in the lives of these children from Bushwick.

Cut and paste to get more information:

http://www.angelrockproject.com/arp/projects/journey_for_change.asp

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/06/01/btsc.bia.south.africa/index.html#cnnSTCPhoto

Soledad O'Brien

Soledad O'Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN: Special Investigations Unit, reporting hour-long documentaries throughout the year and filing in-depth series on the most important ongoing and breaking news stories for all major CNN programs. She also covers political news as part of CNN's "Best Political Team on Television." Most recently, O'Brien has reported for CNN Presents: Black in America revealing the current state of Black America 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien was born September 19, 1966 in St. James, New York of Irish Australian and Black-Cuban heritage. She is most known for anchoring the CNN marquee morning newscast American Morning from July 2003 to April 3, 2007, with Miles O'Brien; their common surnames are coincidental.

O'Brien's parents, both immigrants, met at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in 1958. Her mother was from Cuba and her father was from Australia. Both attended daily Mass at a church near campus. Every day her father would offer her mother a ride. Every day, she declined. Finally she said yes. One year later, the day after Christmas, the two of them were married. Her father was a mechanical engineering professor. Her mother was a French and English teacher. Soledad is the fifth of six children, who all graduated from Harvard University. Her siblings are law professor Maria (b. 1961); corporate lawyer Cecilia (b. 1962), Tony (b. 1963) who heads a documents company; eye surgeon Estela (b. 1964); and anesthesiologist Orestes (b. 1968).

At the time, interracial marriage in Maryland was illegal, so her parents married in Washington, D.C where marriage laws were less strict. Ms. O'Brien explained that in Spanish her full name means, "The Blessed Virgin Mary of Solitude." When she started working in TV, many people recommended that she change her name, but she refused.

Despite her partial Latina heritage, O'Brien doesn't speak Spanish fluently. Since 1995 O'Brien has been married to Bradley Raymond, co-head of investment banking at Thomas Weisel Partners. Together they have two daughters and twin sons: Sofia Elizabeth (born October 23, 2000); Cecilia (born March 20, 2002); and Charlie and Jackson on August 30, 2004.

She began her career as an associate producer and news writer at WBZ-TV, then the NBC affiliate in Boston. She joined NBC News in 1991, and was based in New York as a field producer for the Nightly News and Today. O'Brien then worked for three years as a local reporter and bureau chief for San Francisco NBC affiliate KRON. At KRON she was a reporter on "The Know Zone." O'Brien was featured on a regular segment of the Discovery Channel program The Next Step, holding the position of "Sun Microsystems Infogal." She then anchored MSNBC's weekend morning show and the cable network's award-winning technology program The Site, which aired weeknights from the Spring of 1996 to November 1997.

Ms. O'Brien co-anchored Weekend Today with David Bloom beginning July 1999. During that time, she contributed reports for the weekday Today Show and for weekend editions of NBC Nightly News, and covered such notable stories as John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash and the 1990s school shootings in Colorado and Oregon. In 2003, she covered the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and later anchored NBC's weekend coverage of the War in Iraq. In 2005, she covered the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans. Soledad moved to CNN where she co-anchored their flagship morning program American Morning in July 2003.

O'Brien has just completed a documentary entitled, "Children of the Storm," directed by Spike Lee. She continues to work for CNN, hosting Special Investigations Unit and occasionally filling in for Anderson Cooper on Anderson Cooper 360. She also anchored exit poll coverage during CNN's coverage of the primaries and caucuses in the 2008 United States presidential race. She also has filled in for Paula Zahn on Paula Zahn Now.

O'Brien's work has received an Emmy for her work co-hosting the Discovery Channel's The Know Zone. She has been named to People's 50 Most Beautiful in 2001 and to People en Español's 50 Most Beautiful in 2004. She was named to Irish American Magazine's "Top 100 Irish Americans" on two occasions. She is also on Black Enterprise magazine's 2005 Hit List. Also in 2005, she was awarded "Groundbreaking Latina of the Year" award by Catalina magazine. Most recently she was awarded the 2007 NAACP President's Award.

In May 2007, O’Brien gave the keynote address at the undergraduate commencement at Bryant University and was presented with a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree. She was also the convocation speaker at Cornell University's Commencement on May 26, 2007. O'Brien was also invited to Stony Brook University to speak as part of the university's School of Journalism's 'My Life as...' series. Her section is titled, 'My Life As a CNN Anchor'. O'Brien also spoke at the Binghamton University commencement in December 2007 and received a standing ovation after her speech detailing her disbelief in advice. O'Brien served as the keynote speaker for the 2008 annual National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Conference in Boston, MA in March 2008.

O'Brien joined CNN in July 2003 as the co-anchor of the network's flagship morning program, American Morning, and distinguished herself by reporting from the scene on the transformational stories that broke on her watch. Her efforts following Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Phuket, Thailand, have earned her numerous awards and critical acclaim.

O'Brien was part of the coverage teams that earned CNN a George Foster Peabody award for its Katrina coverage and an Alfred I. duPont Award for its coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. In 2006, the National Urban League awarded her its Women of Power award. O'Brien was also included in Crain's Business Reports' "40 under 40", Essence magazine's "40 under 40" and Black Enterprise "40 Under 40." O'Brien earned the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association of Minorities in Cable in 2006 and has received honorary degrees from Siena College and Mercy College.

She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She serves on the board of directors of The Harlem School of the Arts. O'Brien is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in English and American literature.

Mark Your Calendar

Did you know that some companies in the United States of America have said they would hire a White man with a felony record and no high school education BEFORE they would hire a Black man with NO criminal record and a 4-year college degree?

On July 23 at 9pm and July 24 at 9pm, CNN will premier a series, 'Black in America with Soledad O'Brien'. This is a really “must see TV”. I encourage all Black people to watch it WITH your children.

The aforementioned statistic and many others will be revealed during the series. Soledad O'Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN: Special Investigations Unit, reporting hour-long documentaries throughout the year and filing in-depth series on the most important ongoing and breaking news stories for all major CNN programs. She also covers political news as part of CNN's "Best Political Team on Television."

Ms. O'Brien's report of Black in America, breaks new ground in revealing the current state of Black America 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The program features six hours of documentaries and weekly reports with a focus on fresh analysis from new voices about the real lives behind the stereotypes, statistics and politics that frequently frame the national dialogue about Black America.

People who have met with Soledad O'Brien and previewing this show say it brought tears to their eyes, and a sense of anguish and frustration to their soul.

On July 23 the series will focus on Black women and families and on July 24 it is dedicated entirely to the plight of the Black man in America.

PLEASE watch it and discuss with your children what you see and hear so that they know what they may have to face.