With Belief, Anything is Possible
By
City Year
One year ago, I was lying on a sidewalk in front of my house with bullet wounds in both legs. I can remember the police helicopter flying overhead and my mother screaming on the front porch. While my friends and family watched, the police used my shirt to stop the bleeding.
How I got there is a sad story but one repeated far too often in our city. I was doing some research recently about this. Did you know that last year alone, 920 young people between the ages of 7 and 24 were victims of gun violence in Philadelphia? Over 130 of them died from their wounds. I was lucky.
Too often we dismiss these statistics as bad people doing bad things. Even I thought that. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
The day I got shot started like any other day for me. Back then I was working as a barista for Starbucks on 9th & South. I was working there for five months and doing well. After work, I went straight home, changed my clothes and was talking to my mother on my front porch. My mom had just gone inside the house when a group of my friends ran up saying that one of our friends had been jumped about two blocks away. They wanted me to “ride” with them to get revenge.
I know then that I didn’t want to go and had a choice to make. Do I go with my friends and risk being hurt? Or, do I stay home and risk being called a punk?
You all obviously know the choice I made that night. I gave in to peer pressure. I’m not proud of myself for that decision. I’m angry that I even had to make a choice at all. I am a good person. Young people make dumb mistakes and sometimes pay with their life.
That is why I decided to join City Year. I wear my red jacket every day because I refuse to live a life that has too many dead ends. I want to be a good example for other young people in my city.
I currently serve at Benjamin Franklin High School on Broad Street. The members of my team and I provide in-class support, after-school programming, and college & career guidance to almost half of the students in the entire school. However, we are doing much more than that for our students. I know they look up to us. They see me as a role models and someone they can go to for advice. I share my dreams with them and get them to think about their dreams.
There is one 9th grade student named Ray who I have worked with all year. When I first met him he would just be off to the side in class and not participating. He was on a path to dropping out. I told him that I care about him and all of the students and that if he looked at my pay check he would know it. I don’t put on my red jacket to get paid. He started to believe me and began to open up. Now he does more work and tries at problems he doesn’t understand. He’s beginning to believe in himself. Belief…that’s a word that too many children in our city need more of in their lives. With Belief, anything is possible.
A couple of weeks ago, his teacher thanked me for my work with Ray and more importantly, Ray thanked me for always bothering him to do his work. I know he wanted to say more to me, but he had to be cool. I know I made a difference to him.
Every morning when I get dressed, I look at the scars on my legs and they remind me of my promise I made to myself, to my family who are in attendance this evening, and to the children I serve through City Year - To not let these scars on my legs define who I am, or who I am going to be.
My name is Leon McClain and I proudly serve as a member of the 10th Anniversary Corps at City Year Greater Philadelphia. Over the past nine months I had the pleasure of serving alongside 200 of my fellow corps members who took an oath to serve our community with spirit, discipline, purpose, and pride.
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