Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Damon Jamil. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Damon , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Over the course of your career, have you seen or experienced your field completely flip-flop or change course on something?

I worked and served students in the public education profession for 22 years. Early on in my professional career I felt like I truly made a difference, not only to my students but to my colleagues as well. I showed up everyday ready, willing, able and available to be the teacher, father, mentor, coach and confidant they needed. I would pour and pour into them until I was spent because I knew how much they needed me. I was on a humanitarian mission to be that “rock of constancy” that children growing up impoverished could depend on when they had no one left. I had always striven to be a support system for the families and community as a whole.

Then came the Bush-era No Child Left Behind and it’s subsequent high stakes standardized state testing. Literally, within a decade of being in the classroom I witnessed a learning environment that focused on ensuring the positive growth and development of the whole child switch to one that herded children like cattle and excessively assessed them to exhaustion, much like you would a prized racehorse. State tests are king now and the administration, teachers, and children are it’s subjects. Students take campus-level tests, to prepare for district-level tests, so that they are ready for state-level tests. The children have become test subjects, providing up-to-date data that drive their instruction. Many teachers and students are exhausted, frustrated, and/or completely disinterested in this type of education system. Teachers salaries are tied to the performance of their students which naturally adds an additional layer of stress and points of contention. The love, compassion and purposeful service that led me to the field of education had been completely destroyed, leaving me with no other choice but to make a U-Turn and head another direction.

Damon , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Absolutely! My name is Damon Jamil aka Mr. Heal & Build and I am the founder of We Are Family Enterprises an educational organization that is focused on supporting families struggling with the negative effects of systemic poverty by providing educational programs/services that ultimately create pathways out of poverty. I would like to mention, I am an educator by trade, have a master-level formal education in counseling/psychology, and a creative spirit. My team and I provide youth empowerment workshops that focus on personal growth & development. These social & emotional learning workshops are designed to deepen youth participants knowledge of self so that they can gain greater self-control. These workshops function as character development tools that can be utilized to build a value system that allows everyone to define their own self-worth. We incorporate the music, theater, visual and performing arts to engage, encourage, educate and empower our youth participants. We call it the E.Y.E.S. Program, which is an acronym for the Educating Youth Empowerment System and it is based off of a simple premise; we must create a better human being than is being manufactured by the current cultural, educational, economical and political systems. Dr. West said, “the children are 100% of our future” and as simple as that statement sounds, we are missing the point. As a veteran educator, mentor, coach, and father I have seen the negative effects the lack of guidance, values, knowledge, wisdom and understanding has on our youth. The school to prison pipeline is a very efficient and effective system. When you couple that with drugs, gangs and guns; it leaves our youth and future in a crisis mode. From this critical condition, our work is born. We are the team willing, ready, able and available to go into the juvenile detention system, school system, and recreation systems to meet the youth where they are to provide them with the support they need. We also offer our Fathers of The Hood program to provide group support to male adults dealing with the struggles of raising at-risk children. Fathers are given a safe and secure space to share with and receive support from other fathers with similar experiences. We are grateful to be able to do this work and take nothing for granted. We serve the human family to help us be healthier and happier because we are family.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met Brother Shariff during a community meeting at Masjid Al-QuRan on Cedar Crest Blvd in Oak Cliff part of Dallas, Texas. I was invited to that meeting by Mama Zakiyah, a beloved elder matriarch in the community. I had taught 2 of her granddaughters and she insisted that I come be apart of this particular community meeting. I remember walking into the prayer area at the masjid where the meeting was being held and seeing this melinated brother with this big, round perfectly shaped Afro! It was like he was straight out of one of those 70s flicks! Bro obviously stood out being that we were living in the 2000s. Nonetheless, we leaned up against the same wall side by side and started putting our vision for the community together for generations to come! That was almost 10 years ago and we have kept our eyes on the vision and hands&feet on the mission every since.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest and most difficult lesson I had to unlearn was being the super hero that would save everyone. Every since I was a little boy I have always identified with Spider Man, Incredible Hulk, or Lionel Lord of The Thundercats. My life’s narrative told a story of community responsibility and family duty. Working with at-risk youth growing up in poverty aligned with my own childhood bouts with the ills of growing up in urban ghettos. I can remember giving everything from money to a place to live, in my effort to save the children. I would give so much, so often, that I would lose myself in the service work. The hard lesson came when I gave to someone that was undeserving and it eventually cost me more than I could bear. It was at that moment that I realized that I had been overcompensating and no matter how badly I wanted something for someone, it wouldn’t matter until they wanted it for themselves. That was a humbling lesson to learn, yet it forced me to unlearn how I perceived support. It allowed me to create more of a balanced approach to how I help others. It also took the weight and pressure of saving the world off of my shoulders so that I can be supportive in a healthier manner.

Contact Info:

• Website: wearefamilyenterprises.org
• Facebook: @Wearefamilyenterprises
• Linkedin: Damon Tyler
• Youtube: We Are Family Enterprises

Image Credits
-Brother Shariff Isom -The Young Men of the E.Y.E.S. Program at Kennedy-Curry Middle School