Joyclen

Joyclen Brodie-Mends (Founder of Rise 365)

My dad Daniel wasn’t in the home from I was quite a young age, and my mum Marina was very much the breadwinner and the housekeeper. In saying that, she was very ambitious and ran her own factory just up Chatsworth Road. It was her own clothing factory where she would supply shops. This meant I had to take on the ropes of raising and supporting my siblings. Dad was going back and forth to Africa and doing work there, so I don’t have many memories of him as a child. However, he’s always been there for me, so we have a connection and I feel close to him.

So, growing up was amongst loads of siblings. There were six of us and I was the eldest. When I was younger it was quite difficult. My mum was quite strict, so we weren’t allowed to play out as she was not keen about us being on the streets. I didn’t have much time for it as there was quite lot of housework and cooking to do. My mum came here as a teenager and had a challenging time because of her accent. She was expelled from one of her schools because of cultural differences which would have been challenging in those times. But she was very strong, and I think I get a lot of my attributes from my mum in terms of determination and aspirations to achieve and support others. We would all help her in the factory cutting cottons off and preparing and packaging them all. She was very much into us being involved and gaining skills from a very young age. Because of that I held a lot of responsibility with the home as mum worked long hours and had a lot of different contracts. I did feel a bit like “Why does it have to be me?”. I mean, I was cooking Christmas dinner at 13 for the whole house when my friends could not even cook rice or boil an egg, so it was full on. But looking back at it, I’ve been very grateful, as by my early twenty’s there wasn’t much I could not do with regards to holding a house together.

I had my first child La Braya, when I was nineteen but I was already equipped to manage that and carry that through. I was also able to finish university and even then, knew I wanted to work with young people. I studied sociology and criminology at East London University which was quite daunting. It’s a whole different world - especially back then when there weren’t many young black people in those institutions. It was mainly for the middle and upper classes back then and not really seen as something we did. I found it challenging at first as I’m more of a ‘sort out’ people’s lives person rather than books and theorists. But I made it through successfully and found it interesting. Looking back, I think my mum felt guilty and appreciative about the amount of responsibility I had so she was always there to help with my own family. When I had my daughter, I found my voice, so I don’t regret becoming a young mum. I went on to have three more children after La Braya, Niah, Faith and Jaylen. All my kids were born in Hackney, and I love it here and have always felt a deep connection to the space. To me it’s always felt so rich in culture and diversity and made me who I am and given value and quality to my life. Most of my experiences are from where I have lived and grew up. My whole existence has been in Hackney as I haven’t been anywhere else.

Going back to when I looked after my siblings, Ridley Road was where we did the shopping. It felt like a bit of the Caribbean, like going back home or getting the 242 bus to go to the West Indies. It was a welcoming space regardless of where you were from. Black people could still have a bit of a connection to where they came from. It was also admirable to go to space where black people were empowered, and it was inspiring to see black people having their own businesses.

My career with young people started in Brixton but then I got a job with Hackney Learning Trust supporting parents and their children. Basically, going into homes and working with parents to mange difficult young people and linking them with local provisions. My success rate was really high, and I was contacted to do some youth work here at Concorde Youth Centre on Kingsmead Estate. I progressed quickly and I have been here twenty years now. I was able to really connect with those deemed hard to reach including gang members. These young men were often isolated and there wasn’t a father figure in the home. There was a lot of rejection and they developed a hardness towards any male that they are engaging with and they saw them as enemies. My work has always been very holistic. I have always thought that is the way you have to work with young people. I am honest and straight with people, so I have always connected with youth and their families. Within the service, particularly for young black boys I found all that weight they are carrying with mum always being at work and being home alone.

I started to work more with young men and after the George Floyd murder one of them said to me “Well it’s never going to change is it and we just have to learn to live with it.” His comment really stayed with me, and I thought how sad is that? How sad that we feel we are going to have to live with racism forever…..The young man continued to talk about slavery, his experiences in school with racism and being beaten up by the police. So, for him, he had just come to a point at 23, where he had learnt to accept that this is the way life is. That he is the lesser person in the whole world and out of every race, black people are the least and this is what he has to make do with…… I found this upsetting so decided to do some work with the young men around this. I’ve been trying to support them as much as possible. You know…the mental health and suicide rates for young black men are awful, it is really bad. One of the young men from Rise had an awful situation where he was basically just picked on. He was in a shop and the shop owners thought he was in there too long and it all escalated. It’s mainly to do with the police thinking they can handle young black men how they want and get away with it. This can make my work really difficult because when I am trying to get the boys to toe the line or speak in a certain way they say “Well why should we, the police are the biggest gangs.” It’s hard to challenge that because they are right, and they are talking about their lived experiences…. There is so much work to do.

At Rise we run a black history programme for young people which they are just fascinated with. They are literally at the door. We have a young black history teacher who has found ways of linking black history in a positive light. We don’t just focus on slavery, we focus on before slavery and who black people were, how they contributed throughout history. We question why this black history is hidden and not spoken about. There is also Windrush history and to think they were asked to come here, what they contributed and how they were treated, it’s awful. It’s important that young people learn about their history before slavery and after because it gives them something positive to identify with about themselves. It allows them to know that they can be great and contribute to society because previous generations have done that. So it’s really important that they connect with that history through learning, literature and affirmations. Seeing how much black people have contributed to the world as a whole and how positive that has been for everyone. So for us its not just about just focusing on slavery and what happened, although that’s important, it’s more relevant to understand the wider history of black people and where we come from. If everything you have been told about black people is negative, that’s bound to have an effect.

My success was really high working with black boys and turning their lives around. Some of them are now accountants, land surveyors, financial careers and high end job prospects. They all come from here in Hackney and grew up on Kingsmead Estate. I remember one of them coming to me when he was eleven to tell me he wanted to go to Cambridge University and I said right you are going to go then. He worked really hard and he did go to Cambridge University and now he’s a part of Rise. I had such a high success rate with black boys and my role within the council remit was that I finished this with them when they were nineteen. Young men sometimes don’t find themselves until well into their twenties. They don’t know themselves and they have all that pressure of what they haven’t had, not knowing their dad, mum working all hours, living in poverty….trying to work their way through all of that whilst studying and getting to their early twenties and no longer having a support system there. So the main reason I set up Rise 365 was to fill that gap. We do cater for younger members but that provision for older youth was the main reason.

At Rise we create volunteering opportunities and part of that for me is connecting back to the community. I feel we have lost that quite a bit. Rise is very much about being responsible for your neighbour, or your brother or your sister and not seeing people as your enemy but seeing them as your family, seeing us as one. It’s about bringing back that community spirit for young people which I hope in time will have a knock on effect and bring people much closer together. It’s about gaining all those volunteer experiences and the skills that come through volunteering from budgeting to organisational skills and working as a team. At Rise we run a community shop every weekend giving out food to those in need and our young volunteers can run it by themselves now. It’s all young people led in terms of what they want to do. Rise also aimed to break down that narrative of young black boys are good for nothing sitting on the estate. So for example we have a lot of white elderly people that come into the Rise shop that ordinarily would hold their bags a bit tighter if they walked past our boys. But now they come into the shop and hug them and are like “oh how are you Daniel.. could you come and carry by bags with me.” Its all very much connected, there is a lot of respect and love for the young men who work here. It quite beautiful to see this, the way things have changed so much in two years is unbelievable. And it’s really given young people and that was what was important to me from the beginning was that sense of self belief. Rise stands for reach, inspire, support and empower and it’s about reaching out to young people, inspiring them with what we do and empowering them that can do the same or more or whatever they aspire to do… it’s all there for them. It’s also about equipping them to be able to then go out and do all these things. We also offer mentoring and counselling as these are services not usually engaged with by young men but when they trust something that they are a part of, its easier to then connect them to other services. So Rise has made it easier for me to get them into counselling. So our counsellors are black with lived experience and live local and I see this as important so they can really connect with the young people’s experiences, understanding issues like rejection and racism faced by the young men. We also offer educational support to low-income families which came about after the pandemic. Lastly, we offer and forward them to outside opportunities in terms of creative skills and employment experience. Se tackle things using a different lens and allow the young people to shape things and build on what they think is needed. They are always doing photoshoots and are in the papers all the time which again helps them to create their own identities. I set up Rise also to change the narrative within mainstream media and government have put out about young black men being up to no good. I always say to people I am not naïve as there are young black men involved in some really awful situations but there are reasons as to why they maybe part of criminality. This is not an excuse for their behaviour but there are complex issues behind their behaviour which need to be addressed. I strongly believe that organisations are coming together who are pushing a new story and what we want to be shared out there. We can make a difference.