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Healthy Neighborhood Awardee: Kevin Alton (The Way Organization) & Martel Hedge (Daddy’s Hands)

Interview by Jonathan Kersting

The Community Ownership Award is given to those who actively support residents, small business owners, community organizations and institutions–serving as active participants and key decision-makers in neighborhood revitalization projects. They support local residents and leaders harness the capacity and community power to create positive change and shape the future of their neighborhood.

As active, contributing members of Neighborhood Allies’ Grassroots Grantmaking Committee (GGC), Martel Hedge and Kevin Alton have gone above and beyond in their roles, volunteering 4+ hours every week throughout April-June to interview residents seeking a Love My Neighbor! Grant in addition to spearheading their own initiative to hand out meals to children and senior citizens in their South Hilltop communities during COVID-19. Oftentimes, Martel and Kevin were both just returning home from their day of feeding the community only to log on and interview an aspiring Love My Neighbor! Grantee. They truly create community by supporting and connecting with neighbors and helping to co-power residents to become active players in making their neighborhood better in all that they do.

In addition, Kevin and Martel both run their own successful youth-focused organizations in the Hilltop. Kevin Alton’s organization, The Way Organization, creates positive change and shapes the future of youth within the Hilltop. Kevin is a mentor for young boys in the community while raising his own children. He coaches football and engages youth who may otherwise have been caught up in prevalent gang violence, and encourages them to instead expend their energy in excelling in the sport. Martel Hedge’s organization, Daddy’s Hands, also focuses on creating positive experiences for youth . Martel encourages dads to take a more active role as a parent and provides a space for relationships to build so that children can find a mentor in their father. Both men are clear leaders and are actively helping to improve conditions for the youth in the Hilltop.

Transcription:

Hey, everybody, this is Jonathan Kersting, with the Pittsburgh Technology Council and I have the true honor of hanging out with Neighborhood Allies, helping them promote the 2020 Healthy Neighborhood Awards. And I've just been having a blast talking to the awardees this year, because there is so much Awesome work happening behind the scenes in Pittsburgh, that is just positively impacting neighborhoods and communities. And you don't always know about it. And our goal is to have as many people in the tech community and beyond know about I've been hanging out with on these awards. And so I tell you what, couldn't be more excited to talk to Kevin Alton of The Way Organization, and Martel Hedge of Daddy's Hands. And these guys are the recipients of the community ownership award. And so the community ownership award is given to those who actively support residents, small business owners, community organizations and institutions serving as active participants in key decision makers and neighborhood revitalization projects. So Kevin, and Martel, thanks for hanging out with me today. And congratulations on the award this year. It's fantastic stuff. Thank you. So I always start with people's backgrounds. Like I know a little bit about you. I know our listeners are dying to know a bit more about you, Kevin, let's start with you. What's your background? And what got you into being part of the wave organization?

All right, well, years ago, I always joke around and say, people asked me what my religion was. It was an ongoing joke for years. And I'm in 2015, it really came into fruition. And it became my organization. And I've been doing it ever since. You know, I mentor in the schools. And I have a group of young men in Brashear high school that I mentor from ninth grade to 12th grade, okay, and after that as well. But a lot of our kids, a lot of my kids that I mentor in high school come from our youth sports program that we all have in South Pittsburgh. So we had those kids from ages five to 14. Wow. And we actually grow with these kids. Oh, my goodness.

So we've been doing that for 11 years now.

So you've seen some kids literally go from child to adult and then helping them grow that way to college and with their own families. Now, that's amazing stuff. I mean, what got you inspired to say that I want to be helpful like this and to take your time because your time is precious. But to do that, take your time and go out there and say I want to be decently positive and be a good influence out there.

Well, me personally, um, I had a tragedy in my family. My younger brother got killed in 2008.

Oh, wow. Oh, my goodness. And this was at a loss in life. I didn't know what you know what to do. Right. And I was just, you know, stumbling around trying to figure it out. And I mean, nothing really happened. I mean, I never I didn't figure it out real fast. And then my mother had passed. Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean, let me rewind that my dad I was I had a daughter. Okay, it's 1009 my first child. And you know, I, you know, I sat there and looked at her and I was just like, wondering, what am I do I continue on this road of destruction or how am I going to move past this night, right? And then a year later, my mother says, oh, my goodness, and then I started working for voices against violence. Okay, Mr. Richard Carrington. And I just love the work that I was doing with him and it just you know, I just start blossoming, blossoming from from there. And five years later, I was I was able to create my own organization.

We've been striving ever since I love I mean, what an amazing story from tragedies like that. Doing something positive out of it. That is absolutely so cool. So so cool. And so Martel like we want to learn a bit more about your background and what you do and then we'll kind of jump into some conversation with each you guys kind of back and forth and Martel I mean, what's going on with Daddy's Hands and what's your background?

My background? My background is uh, I was always like active in the community just trying to get get the kids on the street together.

Absolutely. Because you're seeing focus you're seeing kids out there that you can see like they're they're at risk like there's there's no direction and there's no guide them and so you're seeing that and you want to do some work. got it right.

Yeah, sorry. There was just a car accident, right.

Oh my goodness. You serious? Wow. That's crazy.

They're looking at I'm sorry. They were right. Yeah. My own. It just became my passion just  to see where the the kids was lost because I was once one of those kids that was just out here with no goals and nothing to do. And I just found it like like it was it was our our chance to help.

Excellent. I love it. I love it too. So how does how does Daddy's Hands work? What's the premise? How's it impacting? Or it was kind of a I'd like to say that it was a selfish thing. Okay, because I used to always have my head my daughter all the time where mom worked like 12 hour shifts on the weekends. So I always try to get my friends that let's let's go to the mall. Let's go do activity with our kids. So I got Facebook and I was like, well, this is a good way to like, get stuff out. Okay, yeah, communicate it out. Absolutely. Yeah. So that was my first thought is okay, let's let's see what I can do put put together a guess what I did together. One of the ad days was a daddy daughter dance. There you go. Nice. So I'll put the idea out there. And I got the response was crazy sizes that are working. I just started working on it. And I figured, like all my friends were daughters. They'll do it. And they they came through and we had fun. So awesome. And my daughter asked me what color are we wearing next year? We had a father son, cookout. There you go. Soccer, softball.

So everything just became manual.

Gotcha. Yeah, became these things for people to do to connect with their kids and stuff like that. That's so cool. That's so cool. So Kevin, Martel, how are you? Are you guys like working together on projects? How's that coming together?

Well, basically, everything we do is together. Okay. Nice. So anything he got going on, I'll be there helping him clean vice versa. Okay, nice. So you kind of joining forces that and bringing everybody together that way to very cool. And I'm learning a lot off of Kevin. He's also my mentor.

Interesting. So what's Kevin teaching you these days? Kevin, it sounds like you're having a good influence on Martel here. I like this.

Yeah. Kevin, say that because I you know, we learned together myself and my friend probably 30 years. So we, we grew up together. So for us to be in this space now from where we work. This is a great thing. And it's just, I mean, we just, it just works. Very good really works.

Yeah. So then how cool to having a relationship knowing each other for 30 years and then being able to take that and build on it and you're doing these things in which are really just being impactful for all the folks in your neighborhoods and stuff like that.

I love it. I can never really think about until we're getting like interviewed or something, okay.

It's like, amazed us as a fixture in my life, my life, you know, my kids, my mom or grandma, everybody knows them. And vice versa. So it's just like, everyday thing, but we just happen to collide and make a powerful thing.

That's a very cool collision. I'm glad you guys have collide. kind of made a super team as far as Have you guys work together in terms of COVID I know you've got some just done lots and lots of work and making sure that there's meals for everybody. What would the COVID you know, the COVID hit? It was like more started to change on the last day of school was like a half day of school. The next day we had our end of the year sports banquet for football. So as Martel was setting up for the banquet, he comes he comes in and say you know they shutting the schools down I said I heard you like so like let's let's give some food out to the kids you know next week why they got to school.

We all thought it was like a week. I was like cool. And he was like we're gonna make lunches, we got some bread at the church. We're gonna make some lunches. No, we're not gonna pass on pizza and we're gonna pass it out there but there you go. Then you like so He ended up going he ended up going to the supermarket and getting honest lunch meat and bread and chips and juices and bags, right sandwiches and bagged them up. Okay, pass them out. Now there's a lady that was helping us out at the church from the store. And she, uh, to get in touch with the board education, and they had sent us 50 lunches from the school. Okay. So we took them 50 lunches, and we start putting it out there and we gave them out to the community. By the end of the week, he was getting up to 300 lunches. Wow, a lot of that's a lot of lunches. We started passing out 300 lunches a week. I mean a day. We're going to COVID and then three days a week. We had a chef chef on a Callaway, okay. It says restaurants got closed down. So he would come and cook. And then we would deliver food after we pass out the lunch and we would go over cars with food and delivered to the elders in the neighborhood that couldn't get out. Amazing. Oh my goodness, guys, like non stop.

It was can I take. You take things as me being selfish. But I felt like it was just something to do. Like, if it wasn't for that. I will just be sitting in the house doing nothing and I'm not in the house type person.

You're not a do nothing kind of guy Markel. I can kind of dig in, you're gonna do something cool.

And it was like, I was not going to stay in the house. So I was just so thankful that everything was able to come together like that, where we could be out in the community and being busy. Definitely then, in turn, putting smiles on like, the elders face if it really made me feel good. They were saying that it feels like they'll sewers a community again.

Definitely, man. Definitely. You know, I really, I really feel like this COVID thing. I mean, it's a bad thing. But for my neighborhood. I feel like it was a blessing. Interesting, maybe. It seemed to be coming out and you could see no, there's actually a community here still, I love it.

Yeah, everything stopped. It was like a reset for the neighborhood. Interesting. And it was like everybody stopped has to look and see what's going on in your life. And it gave me an old feel. He gave me a old feel old Bell suver in the late 80s and early 90s absolutely, man absolutely good stuff and know that you guys are kind of part of that is the reason why you guys are awardees this year. I can't think of two cooler people to be getting this award than you guys because that is a job well done all the way around. And as you're just getting started on this which I know even bigger things are gonna be happening. You continue to move for us live.

We and we didn't even look for this. We didn't look for a war. We just did it. Like we didn't look for a pat on the back. We just we just did it. And like we continue on doing like even if we never got the war we will still be doing this I believe that absolutely love each other from the church. And we want to thank pastor Ruffin for letting us use the church as well. Very cool stuff. Very cool. So what a great story. So I'm gonna tell a little bit of it. I just want to urge everybody you know, any way that we can be helpful to tech Council. Anyway, if you help them the tech community, reach out to me and let us know because this is the only way we're going to connect people is by telling these stories and you guys have one heck of a story. so honored to be able to tell it. I tell you what guys Martel, Kevin, you guys are the best. You are making Pittsburgh proud. That is for sure.

Thank you. Thank you. We're blessed.

Great stuff. Hold on. Hey, this is Jonathan Kersting with the Pittsburgh Technology Council hanging out with neighborhood allies celebrating the 2020 healthy neighborhood awardees, men and women like Kevin and Martel just doing the right things at the right time. Fantastic stuff.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai