Our Mission:
Help for Those Who Are Less Fortunate
Throughout the
course of my life as a native-born African American woman, I have seen my
share of sorrows -- both in terms of my own sorrows, but also in terms of the
sorrows of others. One sad thing that I have noticed through it all is
that many poor people, a disproportionate percentage of who are native-born
African Americans do not have the knowledge to access support systems that
includes not-for-profit legal assistance, knowledge about the need
for life counseling and knowledge about obtaining other essential services
for themselves and their families. This lack of knowledge combined with a
lack of a caring, culturally-sensitive support system very often leads to the
social ills depicted on the previous page.
My Brother's Keeper has a solution for that.
The mission of My
Brother's Keeper is to act as a holistic case management service by:
1) showing clients how to access essential governmental and
government-financed, not-for-profit services, including attorneys; 2)
help clients become self-empowered so that they can speak for
themselves; 3) help clients to avoid or eliminate behaviors that will either
prevent them from receiving essential services independently how empower
themselves so they can defend adequately defend themselves; and
4) help clients form grassroots groups that can contact government
agencies, politicians to solve problems that are peculiar to the
clients' specific groups.
My Brother's Keeper believes
that while case management services provides by well-established
not-for-profit organizations have addressed the social ills that plague the
African American community to some degree, that there is a greater injustice
done by not-for-profit organizations that eclipses all the good they attempt
to do: the systematic lack of discussion for the original causes of
racisms and retaliatory atmosphere that exists in not-for-profit atmospheres
that discourage people of African descent from forming their own
organizations to see to the ethnocentric needs of their clients.
My Brother's Keeper belives the old adage:
"Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day." Teach a man to
fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Our holistic approach to case
management services ensure that, once we have contacted and coordinated the
providers of essential government and government-financed not-for-profit
services to ensure that poor people who are not self-empowered become
socially dynamic, they will no longer need to "live on their knees."
At My
Brother's Keeper, our mission is simple: to empower our
clients to provide a better life for themselves, their families and
their neighbors -- so that they can live on their feet like the powerful
men and women they are truly meant to be.
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