(Birmingham, Alabama) As an educator with a heart for his students' future, Mark Martin felt powerless to make a long-term difference for the kids in his low-income school district.
"Too often the things that impact classroom outcome and learning the most are the things that the teachers within the four walls of a school building can't really do anything about. Things like parental educational limits, socio-economic status and zip code," Mark says.
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Mark had the idea to start a non-profit school called Build Up Birmingham --a path for high school students to eventually work their way into home ownership.
Part of that path involves rehabbing old homes in the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama.
"The Lord just placed every bit of this on my heart about how to start a boldly different school model where young people would be paid to rebuild their own communities while obtaining skills through apprenticeship learning in the arena with experts in the construction and real estate industries," Mark explained.
Mark's vision at Build Up Birmingham is to empower youth and communities to determine their own future.
Mark also felt it was critical that the kids, especially in an entirely African-American student population, know their own history.
"We teach a humanities class that teaches high school English language arts skills through the lens of social studies and history that our students also need to learn. So we start on the West Coast of Africa and bring it to present day and obviously spend some time on the civil rights era; but students have to learn about things like red-lining and some of the historic injustices that our country has seen, so that they can learn how to navigate the system that often isn't too fair to them...because of socio-economic status and because of the color of their skin, to navigate it so that they can change it for the future," Mark said.
"Behind that though is giving our young people the education, both academic and skills-wise so they can get a high school diploma, an associate's degree and then earn what we call a path to the middle class. At that point our kids have accomplished what we call the road to home ownership. They'll be able to take ownership of one of the homes they've been working on and by that time even living in." Mark explains.
Build Up Birmingham is making strides in the Ensley district of Birmingham, one home at a time.