Sheletta: You don’t have to be a mom to mother somebody

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This Mother’s Day, let’s send more than bouquets to the woman who’s helped raise thousands of Minnesota kids.

Verna Cornelia Price has a huge mother’s heart, but it is open to more than the children she gave birth to. She loves extravagantly, but with toughness, high expectations and no nonsense. “Dr. Verna,” as she is known in the community, has been that adult role model they want to please by living up to her vision of what it means to be their best selves.

Since founding the organization Girls Taking Action in 2005, Dr. Verna has mentored and mothered thousands of at-risk young people of all races and backgrounds. Her Minneapolis-based after-school and summer program pulls in girls grades six to 12 to encourage, empower and motivate them to achieve excellence in school and to be leaders in their communities. Today there are some 400 girls enrolled in 43 chapters across the state.

Boys of Hope, a similar program for boys, launched in 2012 and now gives the same discipline and structured love to 300 young brothers.

Dr. Verna has been at this long enough that she can point to alums all across Minnesota who have beaten the odds to create successful lives that no one saw coming.

Like Shadow Rolan. Now a poised 34-year-old professional, Rolan was, by her own account, a lost and troubled teen who was going no place good. Angry, a fighter. Failing classes. No plans for a future.

Then she met Dr. Verna, who was leading a Girls Taking Action at Patrick Henry High where Rolan was a student.

“Dr. Verna was standing in the auditorium and spoke with such conviction. I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” Rolan recalled. “I had never seen a Black woman like that. I joined the program and I was on her radar. She was on my case to be better; she straightened me up.”

Dr. Verna says she likes the tough cases like Rolan.

“I love them all, but my calling is to that girl that someone else cannot reach,” she said. “I know how to believe in them when they can’t believe in themselves.”

All across Minnesota, community-based youth programs like Dr. Verna’s are squeezing or freezing their budgets. State grants are up in the air. With summertime just around the corner, that means many of our kids could be without those enrichment activities.

That’s what keeps them busy, builds their skills and gives them productive things to do with their empty hours. Families rely on these programs to keep kids off the streets, away from drugs and out of gangs.

“I’m very concerned about losing funding,” said Dr. Verna. “Changes are coming down the street that are unfortunate. But the need is great.”

That’s why we’ve got to invest in programs that do the work for youth. Because when we cut funding, we cut futures.

I grew up in Houston’s Fifth Ward, the roughest and most impoverished part of that great Texas city. When I was in elementary school, a summer program in my neighborhood introduced me to the violin. I started lessons and then I played for 10 years. Because of my violin training, I got to be around people who a kid like me would have otherwise never known. I met mentors who I am in touch with to this day.

These were polished, professional African American women who wore fancy suits and drove nice cars; the Black women in my family wore uniforms and rode the bus.

These women were smart and special. Imagine my shock when they told me that they saw themselves in me — that little Sheletta was smart and special, too. They showed me that there could be a different path.

Dr. Verna was the pathfinder for Rolan, who became the first — but not the last — of her seven siblings to go to college. She helped her fill out college applications, gave her supplies and even drove her to college.

“Going through my classes was tough,” Rolan said. “She would not let me give up on myself. When I wanted to drop out, she pushed me. I heard her voice in my head: ‘We didn’t get you this far for you to quit. You came to get your degree and that is what you will get. Now buckle down and study.’ ”

Today, Rolan is the student success coordinator at Metro State University in St. Paul. She works with students who’ve survived sexual and domestic abuse. She gives them the tools and the support to get college degrees that will lift them to independence.

Rolan can be a role model to them because she has done it herself. Twice. She earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

“I am showing them what was shown to me,” said Rolan. “You need one person in your corner and then the sky is the limit. For me, that person was Dr. Verna.”

The two remain close to this day.

We are links in a chain. Without Dr. Verna, Rolan would not be where she is today. Without Rolan, there would not be the same encouragement for that next generation of college students working to change their destiny.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t complain about young people going no place — the tough cases like Rolan — while taking away the ladder that would let them climb. You can’t say you can’t afford this investment but then be mad when there are no dividends.

This Mother’s Day, if you lost your own mom and want to memorialize her legacy or if you are looking for a meaningful gift beyond a brunch date, make a donation in her name to Girls Taking Action, or, better yet, commit to becoming one of its volunteers.

Dr. Verna needs you aunties and uncles to step up with M&Ms: mentorship and money.

She’s asking for contributions and support so she and her team can show a different path to Minnesota’s at-risk youth.

Its annual fundraiser is coming up on May 23 in Brooklyn Park. It’s a breakfast event. What better way to start a day than to show up for our youth to become a link in the chain.