The Gainesville City School System receives the Helping Hands Award at the 14th annual Futures for Kids Gala sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hall County at the Gainesville Civic Center on Tuesday.
GCSS has been inviting BGCHC to use their facilities to provide after-school programming, as well as working alongside the organization to provide accessibility to programs during the school day and during the summer.
“The fact that Boys and Girls Club and the school system are partnering, truly partnering to help children,” GCSS Superintendent Wanda Creel said. “They’re our children, no matter what. When we pick them up in the morning from their homes until we are safely depositing (them) back to their parents in the afternoon, we’re working together to provide a window of about 12 hours.
“That’s truly what this community is about is partnering together to help all of our students, all of our children be successful."
GCSS is also helping monitor the academic progress of Club members, getting students to participate in the Healthy Lifestyles Club Fit program during the school day and assisting students with any transportation needs.
Sandwiched between the Helping Hands Award was a presentation entitled ‘How the Club Changed my Life’ by BGCHC Alumna Jasmine Jenkins followed by Keynote Speaker Inquoris “Inky” Johnson, star football player for the University of Tennessee before an injury forced him to retire.
“The Boys and Girls Club gave me somewhere where I could go and feel like I was loved,” said Jenkins, a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University. “Where I could go and feel like I would be encouraged and where I felt like I could go and chase my dreams.”
Like Jenkins, Johnson also grew up as ‘a Club kid.’ He attended the Carver/Eastside Boys and Girls Club in Atlanta since he was seven years old all the way through high school.
“It changed the trajectory of my life,” Johnson said. “I grew up in an environment where it was drugs, gangs, violence. You name it, we had it. That Boys and Girls Club was my haven.
“It was my safe place. It was that place where I honed a lot of my skills that helped me to become the man that I am today.”
Johnson first started to really get involved in sports at the Boys and Girls Club. While at Tennessee, he was a projected first-round NFL draft pick.
In 2006, during his junior year, Johnson made a seemingly routine tackle in a game against the Air Force Academy. The hit resulted in a severed artery and nerve damage in his right arm. Johnson almost died due to massive internal bleeding, but while doctors were able to save his life, his football career was over as his right arm was left forever paralyzed.
“When the situation happened…I had to adjust,” said Johnson, who has a master's degree in sports psychology. “In that adjustment, in that pivot, I saw it as a challenge and so it fueled me more than anything. When I was faced with it, it made me look at life in such a way that ‘Was football all that life was really about?’ So there was a level of conviction attached to it, and so my mission never changed.
“Even with playing the game of football, my mission the whole time was to help people and to show others that you can make it past your circumstances…Even though I could no longer play the game, I had my mission and I used that to propel me into what I’m doing now.”
Johnson was injured in the Fall of 2006, he started motivational speaking in the Spring of 2007 and has been doing it ever since for the last 10 years.
