PEOPLE

Teamwork: Working to Transform Communities
By Rheta Murry

Transforming communities begins with the children, who are the leaders and parents of tomorrow. Communities in Transformation (CIT) brings together the people of a community to work together for youth in their areas to help change lives.

“The vehicle has been after-school programs,” said Toni Branyon, CIT program director. “Once teamwork is established, many different programs can be created to help the children.”

Branyon, formerly a spunky elementary school teacher, has seen teamwork really working! Not long ago she agreed to volunteer as community center director in an apartment complex acquired by her friend Tim Cummins of Whirlwind Ministries. Because the community was plagued with gangs, drugs and many other crimes, the children were often at risk not only for physical injury, but also for negative influences to their hearts and their minds related to sexuality, drugs, alcohol and gangs.

Branyon started an after-school program for the children in the area. Volunteers from four different churches served on different days, and the police department sent volunteers on Fridays. In addition to the after-school programs, there were computer classes, block parties, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes, health fairs, dental fairs, and "back-to-school" carnivals in the neighborhood. Children received book bags at the carnival filled with the school supplies they would need when school started. The block parties served to bring different races and neighbors together.

Teenage boys from the area, however, continued to break into the community center.

“That was one group that was not reached. I wanted badly to reach those boys”, said Branyon. “I asked God to please make a way for me to form a relationship with them.”

God honored her request in an unusual way. While driving to the apartment complex one day, she watched the teenage boys play basketball, as she often did. That’s when God revealed to her that basketball would be the vehicle used to make a difference.

“I stopped and let my window down – others now telling me perhaps I was risking my safety,” Branyon said. “It never dawned on me at the time. I was excited at the possibility of a plan.”

God’s Sixth Man Joins the Basketball Team

Organizers split the boys into different church teams. The churches adopted them, paid for their registration and transported them to and from the games. Branyon provided water, food and a lot of encouragement, cheering at the games until she nearly had no voice left. The boys, she thought, would filter into churches sponsoring them. However, that didn’t happen. Branyon prayed for a Christian black man to be a role model for the boys, who all were black.

“Although I was praying fervently, I tried to make every Christian black man I met be the one,” Branyon confessed. “I am not very patient, and I felt they needed this person NOW. God took his sweet time showing me I am not the boss of Him!”

God did bring a godly man to the group – Sheldon Landy, a man in Branyon’s church. Through Landy, the ministry has grown tremendously in two years – with more than 45 participants. As volunteer leader, he leads Bible study with the teenagers and their friends each week. The youth have outgrown the community center and now have their own high school and middle school basketball teams.

Through the basketball sessions and watching the teen boys grow and develop into responsible young men, Branyon learned how much difference it can make when a community focuses on its youth and builds community.