Walking into a high school at 7:20 a.m., it’s expected to see tired students moseying down the hallway to class.
But at Lafayette High School, sounds of excitement and energy can be heard radiating from classrooms with male students in a growing school program that promotes leadership and community.
And now, that experience has opened up to female students as well.
“One of the things you’ll see is that there are a lot of different resources or mentoring programs for men but you’ll be hard pressed to find one for females,” said Archie Jefferson, one of the leaders of the new Women of Vision and Purpose program. “Once we recognized that and all the good we’re doing with our guys, we were like ‘we can’t leave our girls behind.’”
The men’s program was started three years ago by Jefferson, André McLaughlin, the school’s resource officer, and William Capers, a security officer. Since then, Capers has brought the program to James Blair Middle School and Eric Stone, a long-time volunteer with the school’s football team and former battalion chief for Williamsburg’s fire department, has stepped up to help the high school program, which has nearly doubled with the addition of female students.
“We have daughters, so it’s not like because we’re not female we don’t know how to communicate with the young ladies,” Stone said. “We just thought about ‘how would we want our daughters to be raised’ and decided to help instill those values.”
After only just starting at the beginning of the school year in September, the group Women of Vision and Purpose already has some 80 female students that come together once a week before their first class to learn about leadership, sisterhood and strength.
They come from a variety of socioeconomic, racial and cultural backgrounds.
“Now watch this, this is going to be good,” Jefferson said as he geared up a gym full of students to compete in team-building exercises.
The students yell, run, and hop through a variety of different tasks that help to not only bring out natural leaders, Stone said, but to build confidence in students who might’ve been shy before joining the group.
While most of the two group’s activities happen separately, Jefferson said bringing the two together for friendly competition every once in awhile helps build trust among the student body as a whole.
“We want to show the guys that the girls have something to offer and when you put those two together, you have something special,” Jefferson said.
Members of the boys’ program have enjoyed seeing the same opportunities open up for their female peers as well.
“It shows that the girls can do equal things that the guys can do,” said senior Damonte Dixion. “We all might be fathers and mothers one day, and this program teaches us how to continue growing as leaders.”
The growth of the new women’s group hasn’t gone unnoticed by other faculty at the school. Principal Kimberly Hollemon said she will support the program in any way because she’s seen a change in culture among the women at the school.
“I do have to say they serve as the real models, not role models,” she said. “They teach reality of what society will bring to them and these gentlemen do a great job of showing these ladies their self-worth and what it means to garner the respect from just society in general.”
Jefferson said he is excited to get the girls involved in volunteer activities and possibly having speakers come and talk. But, most importantly, the three men in charge just want to provide a safe space for these female students to flourish into womanhood.
“Girls have a hard time working together a lot of times because there are so many things that divide them,” Jefferson said. “What we want to do is let them know it’s okay to be sisters, it’s okay to build each other up.”
