My Brother’s Keeper Houston (MBKH), a Houston Health Department initiative focusing on empowering boys and young men of color, now has a new director – Chazz Bailey.
Bailey, COO (Creator of Opportunities) of the personal and professional coaching company The Lifted Lifestyle, is now leading MBKH. He’s doing so by living his motto, “purpose over profit,” believing that developing people and communities creates a domino effect that can positively change the world.
The Defender spoke with Bailey about his vision for MBKH to improve life outcomes for young men of color.
DEFENDER: What experiences led you to a life of service?
BAILEY: Well, I think the best experience is life. As a kid, I knew I wanted better for other people. I was a servant when I was young, not really paying attention to myself, but realizing that whatever happened to someone else made me better. I have to start out giving grace to my mother and father for bringing me up and allowing me to navigate through the space to understand a greater need other than myself.
DEFENDER: What are some examples of your service?
BAILEY: Being young, going to visit nursing homes, going to mentor and help elementary children when I was in middle and high school. Then, when in college, I would actually mentor collegiate students, and that was my introduction to the 100 Black Men of America. I even started a chapter in Savannah, GA. And what I was able to do was see how that model worked, and see the data on how our people were affected. Then I said, “Okay, take what I know and just give it to someone else.” One thing my wife always says: “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” So, I make sure whatever I fill into myself – time, money, energy – I give to someone else.
DEFENDER: How did 100 Black Men help in your development?
BAILEY: When I came to Houston, I worked through the 100 ranks, creating programs, working with some of the great young minds and older minds of the city, and actually put my foot to the road. So, now I had a place to call home to really work. That work took me to the food banks, high schools, middle schools, the home yards, to just clean up the parks; to see the ins and outs on how a system really operates and works through organizations that are really about impact. That prepared me more than anything. Because it gave me real-time data and real-time work to do it.
DEFENDER: What’s your vision for MBK?
BAILEY: My vision for the MBKH Initiative is simply to convene people because it’s not just me that’s about doing great work out here. It is not just me that wants people to be better than they were. It’s a lot of people out here already doing the work. So, the model that MBKH has is identifying those individuals or organizations that are doing this work and bringing them together. So, we are the backbone. And if you think about your body structure, all the other people are your nervous system; the nerves that make everything work. I want to be the bridge to bring people together about outcomes that need to be generated to move our city forward. Because through that type of work, collectively we can say we really have a community and then we can also change our community.
DEFENDER: What’s the MBK plan for moving youth from mentorship to life success?
BAILEY: We have six milestones to combat the school-to-prison pipeline. MBKH is all about the cradle-to-career pipeline. It’s trying to take that negative and invert it toward a positive way. The challenge in that is because our children have been affected for so long and there’s so much negativity around them that sometimes they can’t see out of it. So, it’s about exposure. Putting them in rooms and positions they’ve never been in before so they can become who they dream to be. Because dreaming is one thing, but if you put a plan into action, you can make it happen.
DEFENDER: What’s one of the biggest challenges you face to being successful?
BAILEY: Reflecting back on the 100 Black Men statement, they have a great moniker that says “What they see is what they can be.” I believe in that wholeheartedly. So, my number one challenge is to change the mindset; the mindset of where they are and where they can go. But that also goes beyond the young men and boys. That goes to organizations because organizations tend to think, “Well, we have to do this and we have to be the only ones and we have to fight for the grant dollars.” And it becomes a selfish way in the middle of something that takes a collective. So, once we change that mindset and say “We all need each other to make this change happen for our community,” then we can really see the change that we want to have. And it shifts from being a moment to a movement.
