Don Ferguson had a full-circle moment in 2018.
The 68-year-old Lake Orion resident is the project coordinator for the 100 Black Men of Greater Detroit, Inc. – Project Success program. He was awarded several years ago with the 100 Black Men of America’s Nation Mentor of The Year.
“I was mentored when I was younger … by way of Boy Scouts,” Ferguson said, adding that while his loving mother and father raised him, they weren’t always able to do things that his scoutmaster could do.
So Ferguson became an Eagle Scout in 1969. Fifty-some years later the person handing him that award was none other than his scoutmaster.
“I think I got the tape of when they gave me the award and he said, ‘Wow — 50 years ago’ he was mentoring me and he is still mentoring,” Ferguson said. “When I won the award they asked me what made me start mentoring … I mentor because somebody did it for me. That is why I mentor.”
Project Success programming helps Black male students with their learning environment to guide them and their educators toward even greater success.
January is National Mentoring Month and two mentors reveal why they give back in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s altruistic ways.
The 100 Black Men of Greater Detroit, Inc. – Project Success program, which regularly impacts the lives of Black male youth.
Photo provided by Don Ferguson
The 100 Black Men of Greater Detroit, Inc. established in October 1993, is one of over 113 chapters of 100 Black Men of America. Their membership consists of business and community leaders throughout the metropolitan Detroit area. The organization has developed many programs with a laser focus on impacting the lives of Black youth, according to their history.
Ferguson, who has mentored since leaving the army after college, said that mentorship, especially mentoring other Black men, is an honor, joy, and privilege that he takes seriously. Before COVID-19, Ferguson and the Project Success team would meet at an area community college on Saturdays and learn from one another.
“We want to provide them with the assets they need to move forward and grow,” he said adding that his mentorship curriculum includes learning about etiquette, proper relationships, dressing for success, and more. With a 95% retention rate, the popular program has a loyal following in the Black community.
Right before things closed down last year due to the pandemic, Ferguson and his team purchased laptops and tablets for the mentees not realizing that would be their virtual mentorship lifeline for months to come — and even still to today.
Ferguson added that he learned through mentoring the boys online that many of them didn’t have desks to work at — some were laying on their beds, on their floors, or sitting at the kitchen table during mentoring sessions.
“We get to see a lot of different things in Zoom you don’t see in the classroom,” he said.
Ferguson also has his mentees reading “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” book, where there is discussion afterward.
They also discuss cultural issues that crop up.
Ferguson said that one of his mentees told him that white people are all bad and that “they’re here to hurt you.”
Ferguson, who lived around the country and world [before retiring from his corporate job at General Motors] had a different perspective. He replied to the young man and said that meant he didn’t like his wife, who is white.
The young man then said that wasn’t true.
“He said, ‘She’s different,’” Ferguson said, adding that every year he would invite the young men to his home where there was good food to eat, an opportunity to go swimming, and his wife would lovingly prepare some homemade sweets.
Ferguson said that through that conversation, the young man learned that just because a person has been told something it doesn’t make it true.
“In my home, we often discussed Dr. King’s dream – I understand the Dream, we lived it. My wife is from Germany and my children have been called ‘mixed,’” he said, adding that his children are very comfortable in their own skin. “All because of a dream.”
Ferguson said that he lives out Dr. King’s dream every day and he’s been married for 41 years.
“Together, we have seen a lot in 41 years,” he said adding that the couple lived in his hometown of Virginia, throughout New York, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, Europe, and Detroit and they’ve received negative looks among other things. “That is when you learn that it’s not what people call you, it’s what you answer to. And if you are strong and if you do the right thing people forget your color. … If you become an upstanding citizen they see the upstanding citizen.
“If you can dream it, that can become a reality. This is exactly why the 100 Black Men of Greater Detroit, Inc. says, ‘What They See is What They Will Be,’” he said.
Detroit native Tallette Kitchen, center, is an area mentor who mentored at Mumford High School in December 2019.
Photo provided by Winning Futures
Native Detroiter Tallette Kitchen, 44 of Canton, volunteers through nonprofit organization Warren-based Winning Futures, which empowers metro Detroit high school students to achieve their best educationally.
Kitchen, who has been with Winning Futures for the past four years, said that as part of the program curriculum, pre-COVID-19 she went to different Detroit high schools and helped students with workforce preparation, making smart goals, and more.
She added that while COVID-19 put a “damper” on the program, she still reaches out to those she formerly mentored and motivates them, and they reach back out to her.
“I find myself thinking about them a lot, knowing their stories,” Kitchen said, adding she helped one of her teens in the past positively deal with her emotions during a mentoring session after losing her mom. “Mentor/mentee relations are about the relationships — that’s the foundation of it. In these times it’s needed now more so than ever.”
Kitchen also said that she was only one decision away from being a statistic, a casualty — but her mentors, her family, her environment helped her.
“When I think about that I think of the various people … to influence my life,” she said of her parents, a grocery store clerk, church mother, or someone else. “Whatever it was that nudged you in a different direction and guided your path … I feel it is important to me to be that person; be that change in people’s lives.”
For more information visit https://www.100blackmendetroit.org/.
For more information visit https://winningfutures.org/.
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