Deonte Ward believes his life would be very different, and possibly not for the better, if it weren’t for John Downs.
Downs, his mentor, gave him the encouragement, emotional support, and discipline to graduate from Annapolis High School in 2007 and later Lincoln College of Technology in Columbia with an 18-month certificate in electronics system technology. “I was bad. I was in juvenile court. I was fighting. Busting people’s windows,” Ward recalls. “I got in trouble every year with the police for about five years.”
When Ward was 11 years-old he met Downs, who encouraged him to channel his aggression into basketball and football, and provided incentives for him to clean up his act. “If you got good grades, he would reward you,” says Ward, an Annapolis resident who grew up in Newtowne. “He would pay for me and my friends to play basketball and football as long as we were good. Without him, I probably would have been selling drugs.”
At that point, Ward became determined to provide the same kind of guidance and mentoring that Downs had offered him to the next generation of neighborhood kids. At age 18, soon after graduating, Ward started a program called Connect the Kids to help keep elementary and middle school students staying on the right path. “I was pretty much like their tutor and came into the role as a mentor,” he explains. “I had that program for about seven years. The group grew from four to 32 kids, and they were all doing well in school.”
The program’s success inspired him to expand it to include high school students and to rename it B.L.A.C.K. (Becoming Leaders Acquiring Critical Knowledge) Excel. It includes 13 high school students, 12 middle schoolers, and 15 elementary school students.
To keep the programs going over the years, Ward estimates he has spent about $40,000 of his own money. For the past eight years, he worked as a carpenter. Fortunately, his program got a $90,000 federal grant last year through the Anne Arundel County Partnership for Youth, Children, and Families. He now works fulltime as B.L.A.C.K. Excel’s youth director and develops curricula. His organization also relies on community fundraising events to help cover its operating expenses.
“He’s always giving his time to all the different communities in Annapolis,” says Comacell Brown, the program’s art director, of Ward. “As a child, he grew up in an environment like most of these kids. He knows what it’s like to come from the bottom and the obstacles and struggles these kids have to go through.”
Ward partnered last year with a pair of nonprofits: The Newtowne Community Development Corporation and Superior Futures, which spearheads a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program.
About half of the students in B.L.A.C.K. Excel come to the organization through referrals from agencies and organizations such as local schools, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Newtown Community Development Corporation.
Sessions are held at the American Legion Post 141, and the community centers of HACA (Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis) Properties in Robinwood, Newtowne, and Eastport Terrace/Harbour House.
“I started focusing on career training, basic life skills, trade skills, professional development, and financial literacy,” Ward says of his mission. “I realized a majority of my community members were not getting these things.”
Ward’s organization offers a wide range of 18-week, three-month, and nine-month curricula, including art, music, life skills, trade skills, and the STEM program. The art program is run by Brown, who owns a painting/design/screen printing business in Annapolis. He introduces the students to creative projects like painting murals, screen printing on T-shirts, and graphic design for logos and flyers. He also has an activity he calls “Paint and Show,” where the students, for example, create a scene of a beach with cartoon characters.
“I put together projects that highlight their mental health and ask about what problems or issues they may have at home,” Brown says. “Art gives them an outlet to relieve some of their frustration, gets them focused, and even gives them peace of mind.”
Ward likes to talk about the music curriculum, which has five aspects: writing, producing, singing, rapping, and the business aspect. “We are using music to be a positive thing on the community,” Ward says.
Allen Smith, a recent graduate of Annapolis High School, is one of B.L.A.C.K. Excel’s shining success stories. After he joined the program in August of 2017, his GPA rose from 2.9 to 3.5. He has since been accepted by and plans to attend Bowie State University in the fall.
“It has helped me open my eyes,” Smith says. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and I was a little lost. The program helped me become more self-motivated and opened my eyes to how the world around us is changing. It just motivated me a lot.”
Smith can’t talk about the program without mentioning Ward. It was Ward who inspired Smith to set his sights on four-year colleges rather than a community college.
“He is a very selfless person who definitely has the interest of others in his heart,” Smith says of Ward. “He wants to see everybody succeed. He has constantly told us about what he had to go through growing up, and he doesn’t want us to experience the same things. He is a great mentor and a phenomenal leader.”
For more information about B.L.A.C.K. Excel, visit the organization’s landing page on facebook.com.
