News
MBK
Zo Elrington
Volume 5 Issue 3
January 14, 2025

The My Brother's Keeper Club at their Project Adventure trip. Image Provided by Ms. Coleman.
The My Brother's Keeper (MBK) initiative, started in 2014 by President Barack Obama, seeks to “Change the Narrative” of boys and young men by closing and eliminating the opportunity gaps they face and helping them reach their full potential. Last year, the initiative was brought to the Valley Stream Central High School District. The pioneering members of VSN's MBK embraced the mentoring brotherhood organization at VSN.
VSN’s MBK went on a field trip to Brookville Outdoor and Environmental Education Center’s 20-acre land. In conjunction with the other MBK chapters of our Valley Stream Central High School District, the young men participated in adventure education and teambuilding courses focused on developing trust, communication, problem-solving, risk-taking, and cooperation.
Spanning over the center’s twenty-acre former NIKE Missile Base, the teams, diversified into six to eight MBK members from each group, navigated a series of field challenges and trials in the chilling cold.
Collective Motion
In the first challenge, the boys were tasked by their Brookville Sherpas to complete a racecourse wearing giant team skis. The classic teambuilding exercise, amplified by the biting cold and slippery gravel, initially proved challenging for the boys before they applied their MBK tenets to the exercise. They realized the key to the exercise was to unify and actively listen under one leading voice, a tenet they practice in their respective weekly meetings with the aid of a talking piece or stick. After having this epiphany, the boys were able to finish the racecourse in never-before-seen times and fashions - forwards, backwards, and even while facing different directions on the same skis!
The important lesson of unifying under one voice provided a solid example and reinforced the initiatives founding beliefs of organized communal collective work to achieve the same goals and in this case, staying afoot.
Building Bridges
In the second challenge, the boys were tasked by their Sherpas, in riddle like fashion, to transport each brother platform to platform across three wooden blocks spaced ten feet away from each other. The boys could only use two short planks to set transversely across the gap, relying on their brothers to stand and secure the first plank as they walked across to the second one which overlapped the first plank and connected to the next platform. Repeating this process, they placed plank on top of plank and reached the end ensuring that every brother crossed safely, leaving no man behind.
The practice reinforced and symbolized the process of building bridges, a tenet important to MBK’s mission to build bridges of opportunity for boys and young men of color.
By Each Other’s Bootstraps
The next challenge seemed to be the thrill of the day for many of the brothers. The men shot gasps and gawks at the twelve-foot wall that hung amongst the Brookville trees. The Sherpas, demonstrating the danger of the exercise, told the boys what they’d have to do in a serious fashion, losing the blissful ignorance that might’ve been construed by the previous riddles. The boys would have to support each other up the wall and onto the platform above. Those who summited first assisted in pulling the scaler up the wall while those on the bottom boosted their teammates by cupping their feet in their hands and pushing upwards.
The coordinated support and trust of the boys secured and simplified the seemingly risky exercise, as they pulled each other over the wall. The overarching message could not be ignored, as they learned the lesson of peer support in overcoming physical and social obstacles in pursuit of improved outcomes. Redefining the idiom, they pulled each other up by each other’s bootstraps above the wall, symbolizing collective assistance in overcoming social inequities, an important goal of the MBK initiative.
The Future
The junior members, two of whom will attend the MBK New York State Symposium in Albany this year and continue “Changing the Narrative,” cannot wait to have this experience again. They only hope that next time the weather is a little warmer than thirty-five degrees.
MBK North expresses its gratitude to Faculty Advisor Ms. Coleman, Mr. Heyward, and the VSCHS District for facilitating this trip. They hope to be featured once again in the school paper with a positive report from the 2024 New York State My Brother’s Keeper Symposium in Albany.