Bringing Happiness To the Forefront of Foster Care

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Brad:
Hey warriors. Thanks for tuning. In on today’s episode of with specific words, we spoke with Corinne LeBaron from Embrella and Darryl McDaniels, DMC from the Felix Organization about foster care and how they are helping children enrich their lives. Umbrella is a 501c3 not-for-profit that is the leading statewide advocacy agency for foster adoptive and kinship parents in New Jersey. Their mission is to provide advocacy and enriching programs and service to empower families and youth to thrive. They help foster children achieve their dreams and wishes. The Felix organization is a 501c3 not-for-profit that provides inspiring opportunities and new experiences to enrich the lives of children who are growing up in the foster care system. We had a great conversation with Darryl and Corinne about foster care and the strategies and programs they have at their respective organizations that help provide resources to create a better life for many. Let’s welcome, Darryl, and Corrinne to the show.

Mike:
So we got to kick it off with this first. Hold on a second.

Brad:
Yeah. So thanks everybody for, for being here. So we’ll, uh, we’ll, we’ll kick it off to, uh, to get rolling. Um, as, as Mike said, I’m Brad Caruso. I’m a partner here at with them and we, uh, host up our, uh, civic warriors podcast, which, uh, we’d like to highlight, uh, initiatives like the highlight raise awareness to, uh, things that we can all do better in the world and, and, uh, great charitable causes that are out there. Um, I work predominantly in our non-profit group with Mike and Ashley’s our guru of marketing who helps us, uh, make ourselves sound better than we actually are. So, uh, actually Ashley is on here and, uh, co-hosts the podcast with me. So, um, you know, we’ve, we’ve been doing this for about two years now. We have, uh, we have about, I want to say 20 episodes out or 20, uh, 20 releases of, uh, of discussions that we’ve had with organizations all across the, uh, all across the spectrum and the, and the gamut of, of causes, um, environmental. Um, we’ve had a few, uh, Mike has had a few guests on Mike. Mike’s been great about, uh, bringing people aboard to just, uh, share their voice. And, uh, it’s been awesome that I’ve been a wild ride so far. And now we, now we have a real celebrity on here and we’re happy to have you there. Thanks for being here.

Darryl:
I don’t think I’m a celebrity.

Mike:
Well two real celebrities in the foster world.

Brad:
We have two celebrities in the foster world. Um, Darryl McDaniels, who, uh, is joining us, uh, who you may know is DMC and, uh, Kerryn LeBaron, uh, from, from umbrella. Um, and so, uh, we’re going to talk a little bit about foster care today and just a little about, just share your thoughts so we can raise awareness and, and really help, uh, both of your causes. Um, you know, Darryl and talking with Mike, I know, and just kind of doing a little back and understanding of, of kind of your background, just knowing that you’re, uh, integrally involved with the Felix organization and helped found that organization, uh, and Corinne you’ve been working with, uh, umbrella, uh, and, and furthering further in the cause there. So, um, yeah, I wanted to start off maybe if, um, you know, we’ll start with, we’ll start with Corinne. Maybe you can give us a little bit of background, bring us up to speed about how, uh, how you got to working with Embrella and, and, uh, you know, passion with the cause of, of foster care.

Corinne:
Absolutely. Um, I’ve worked with a nonprofit organizations for my entire career, um, and specifically around children and families. Um, I’ve been with Embrella for about four years now. Um, so in, in the past, that’s been in different, um, different organizations, but always focusing again, children, you know, children, they’re the future, all the little cliche things, but it’s so true. And what can we do to make this world a better place is to support children? Um, so I was new to the foster care world, um, about four years ago, but have learned a lot. And there’s been a lot of changes in New Jersey, just over, even the past four years that I’ve been here. Um, but, uh, you know, I don’t know how much detail you want me to go into now, as far as what we do give an overview, or just kind of talking about how I got involved.

Brad:
Yeah give a little overview too. I think it’s helpful to understand. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4:
Sure. Um, Embrella, uh, we, we formerly were called Foster and Adoptive Family Services, um, and recently changed our name to umbrella to kind of more encompass what we do. Um, we’ve been around for about 45 years. So we’ve been around a long time. Um, and I love the best quick little story about us is we were founded 45 years ago. It was three foster parents sitting around a kitchen table saying, you know, um, foster kids need so much more. And if it’s not us as foster parents making a difference than who is so 45 years later after these three foster parents sat at a table, we have over 40 staff, a $5 million budget and work with families throughout the state of New Jersey. Um, one of those founders, her name was Sue Don Diego. She’s currently 87 years old and she’s still on my board of directors walking the halls pre COVID of the legislature in New Jersey, giving them health. So, uh, she’s, uh, she’s an inspiration for me. I want to be 87 years old doing the same thing. So, um, we provide services to foster parents to ensure they have the support that they need to make sure that when kids are in their care, they get everything, um, all the support, all the services that they need. Um, and then we also provide services directly to the children and youth that are in care. Um, it can be scholarships, it can be one-on-one mentoring for kids that are aging out, and aren’t sure what they’re going to do. Um, when I was 18, I was not ready on my own to go out into the world as a supposed adult. And I had a two parent household there for me. So imagine kids that don’t have that. And, and how do you go out? So we have one-on-one mentoring for them. Um, we provide scholarships, not just a school vocational school, but to summer camps. And I know Darryl, you have, we’ll have to talk after this because I know something else we might need to do some partnering there. Um, and we also provide support as in, um, money for extracurricular activities. Um, you know, kids want to go do karate classes or that type of thing. We want to make sure that the foster parents have the money available to send those kids to do whatever they’d like to do. So that’s a broad kind of overview of all the different services we provide. That’s awesome. Thanks. Thank you for sharing that Corinne.

Darryl:
Awesome.

Brad:
YeahAnd do you go by Darryl DMC? What, uh, how would you like

Darryl:
You could call me Daryl. You could call me D you could call me Darryl. Becca. You could call me DMC. Most people call me D.

Brad:
Alright D. Why don’t you share a little, maybe share a little bit about, yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

Brad:
Maybe, maybe, uh, if you could share a little bit about, about your background and history and, uh, parents up to speed with, uh, with your charitable endeavors today with the Felix organization.

Darryl:
How did that get to the Felix organization of 15 years ago? Um, woke up one day and I wanted to kill myself. So I don’t know. Uh, I just woke up and I just had this void, right? So the people was like, yo, what your DMC, you know, run DMC this and that boom bang. But none of that stuff means anything unless you’re right inside. You know what I’m saying? So this particular day I woke up and I just didn’t want to live no more. And I looked back on my life and I started examining my life. I was like, okay. Darryl McDaniels Harlem Queens New York run and jam a friends. My father’s name was Mifred. And my mother’s name is Ben. And my brother, Mike, you know, the infamous rhyme son of Milfred brother of Al. Ben is my brother and runs my pal. It’s McDaniels, not McDonald’s. These rhymes are Darryl’s those burgers are Ronald’s. i ran down my family tree. My father, my brother and me. Now that Robin so significant because that was in 1986. So that Ron came back into my spirit. I ran down my family tree, my mother, my father, my brother, and me. And I looked at all the stuff that I did were run DMC first to go, go first to go platinum, first on a cover rolling stone first. But this thing feels everything that hip hop is, they say it’s because of me running Jay, but something still was missing. And it wasn’t right. And I, you know, I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I was going through life. I went to this deep, deep depression and, you know, it’s, it seemed like it would have, it was going to end. And that was the uncomfortable thing. No, it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy with my accomplishments. This feeling that I had on me was so painful. I didn’t want to live it no more. So make a long story short. I was an alcoholic, suicidal, metaphysical, spiritual wreck, who was about to jump off a building one day, right before I was getting ready to jump. I started speaking to myself. Yo Darryl you can’t do this now. And I’m, you know, it’s funny. Cause I was like, leave me alone. I’m trying to live, you know, lead this, this and that. You can’t do this until you let the world know who you really are. That came into my spirit. I will say, what does that mean? So I jumped back down and something in me said, D before you go without videos, you got music. You’ve got all the money and see stuff, but you need to leave something so people could know who that little boy Darryl is. This DMC thing is not possible with the little boy Darryl. If Darryl didn’t exist, none of that would’ve happened. So I’m like, okay, so I’ve lost some shorts that I’ve got to write a book. And then the book I want to say, yo, what’s up world I’m DMC from the groundbreaking rap group, run DMC. You know me first to go, go for school. I threw up in Hollis, Queens New York, Jays my friend was my friend, mother and father. And I was born May 31st, 1964. Now, when I got to that identifying piece about myself, I say just, I need to know more. I mean, the readers of this book will need to know more. So just to make it more interesting for the readers I call my mother up. I’m 35 years old. Hey mom, I’m writing this book. I need to know three things. What time I was born, what hospital? And how much did I weigh? So she told me those three things. I love you, son. I love you too. Ma. Hung up the phone. Um, putting the information together to give it to the guy who was going to help me write the book an hour goes by the phone rings. It’s my mother and my father. We have something else to tell you son. Okay, what is it? I thought it was going to be so trivial. Like, well, when you was born, there was a power outage in a hospital. We gave birth to you by candle light. I thought it would be something like that. They was like, we need to tell you something. And I’m like, okay, what else? You know, what is it? It was like, well, you was a month home. You was a month old when we brought you home and you’re adopted, but we love you bye, click. So at the age of 35 I’m suicidal. So imagine getting hit with that information that will crush your goals for now. I’m really going to kill myself because now I’m not even my mothers and fathers and this and that. And all of this stuff went to me, but then a peace came over me. A peace came over me and said, you have the best mother, father ever. You had everything a little kid could want every school that I went to, my mother and father paid for, went to Catholic school had both parents in the house. We had a fence around it. We had a dog, every side, the perfect life. So that was a revelation to me saying, oh, there’s something more bigger to this DMC thing. Everybody knows who DMC is. But if this little boy Darryl that paid all that is possible with the loving guidance and discipline and direction. So this bigger things started to open up to me, although I was still dealing with the depression, but then it didn’t. And then I found out that I was adopted at age 35. Then I found out I was a foster kid. So now it’s even getting deeper. My whole career on every record is Hollis, Queens, New York, Christmas time in Hollis Queens. My name is DMC from Hollis, Queens. Run-DMC my story. Didn’t begin. My story began somewhere else. So make a long story short. I’m dealing with all leader’s emotions. I’m going through this. I’m dealing with the depression. I’m dealing with the traumatic revelation, trying to understand this. So I go to Hollywood and um, my manager, my manager and my, um, publicist was trying to keep me busy, keep his busy. So you don’t kill itself, basically what he was trying to do. So they sent me to LA to audition for a movie role. And I’m sitting in a, um, I’m sitting in a meeting with the agent and my manager is he’s doing the business or whatever, whatever I’m over here like this, I just found out that I’m adopted. I’m a foster kid. None of this stuff means anything. I don’t care about rapping no more. Okay. About money. I’m trying to figure it out. I know what those words adopted foster kid. So in mama, one of them that’s me, but making a long story short. So I’m sitting there in another world and the agent turns to me and he says, Gerald, I always see run. I always see Russell. I always see, um, Dickie and runs house family. And I always see Camorra why do I, what’s up with you? Where have you been? And stuff made me just make me say, oh, he wants to know. And I just upped it up. Well, I just found out that I was adopted at age 35 and I was a foster kid that everybody in my neighborhood knew. And all my teachers knew my family, my cousin, they kept the secrets like, oh, I just hit him with it all. And he was like, but then he says, wow, I don’t think I could ever understand what you’re going through. What? A week ago, this lady named Sheila Jaffe was in my office. Sheila Jaffe, one of the biggest, um, cast and directors in Hollywood. She co um, mark Walberg John Travolta. Or if you really want to know what she did, Sopranos and entourage, NEF, sick to greatness. So a week earlier, she was in his office venting to press down and out because she was doing, um, uh, she was doing a search for her birth errands because she’s adopted and she kept hitting it dead ends. So during her meeting with them, she was just in the same place than I was. So he just said this, I could never understand what you’re going through, but there’s somebody that you might want to talk to. And he tells me Sheila’s story. So fast forward, um, I fly back out to LA and all me and she looked at, we just had a meeting. And what that for me was prior cry. When I found out that I was adopted, I felt like I was the only one in that situation. Everybody else got them, blood mothers and fathers. So I started to act out. So all of this has a lot to do with these kids. I’m a grown man going through what these kids go through. So when I met Sheila, the beautiful thing about that was all of those feelings went away because I’m looking at another person who’s in the same situation as me. What was that? Oh my God, I’m not alone. Another foster person. So we sat there, we talked about our feelings. We talked about our emotions and we looked at a loss and then Sheila says this. She says, we were fortunate. We were fortunate to be put in this situation that we, we were fortunate to be adopted. That’s the whole purpose of foster kids. Get the kids back with the birth family. You know what I’m saying? But like, you know, some of these kids, they age out the system. If they don’t have people like Kerryn around them, they don’t have the information. You can go to school, to scholarships, to go to school. You can have houses. There’s three places that they go, they go to jail. They go to the grave or they go to the mental health institutions. If they don’t have the guidance and direction and discipline that we had, every kid deserves that. So Sheila says Darryl, we were fortunate to have that edge. And she said, what about the kids that don’t get adopted? So we sat there and we started crying. So then Sheila goes, I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to build facilities in every state in America, that’s that’s corner, um, cater. They give life skills, education, or more emotional, physical, and spiritual support to all of these kids in foster care because all of those kids have a purpose and destiny that they cannot possibly comprehend. And, and even the old Aiden come out of there and not outlet children, it’s our responsibility to make sure they get where they supposed to go. There’s people outside of their family that must allow that helps them fulfill their destiny. So me and Sheila looked at us if it wasn’t for my mother and father, my mother and father said I was born in Brooklyn. No, I was born in Harlem. My mother and father got me from Harlem, moved me to Hollis Queens, gave me low, gave me discipline, gave me direction. If that didn’t happen, I would’ve never met Run and Jay. Sheila says, what happened to you was the purpose of test. Yeah, it’s a crazy story. So real quickly, we said, we’re going to build facilities in every state, in the United States of America so these foster kids can have everything that we were fortunate to have. So then we call up our friends. You can’t understand the purpose of what I’m trying to say is, well, what, what are so-called, um, leaders of our communities or the politicians? We cannot just give out turkeys on Thanksgiving. We can not just come into these neighborhoods, or into these situations with these families and show up on the holiday, just as something that we have to be, not attack. We have to beat. We have to have a presence in the lot of these young individuals and every day, just like parent hats. I’m not saying Columbia, Sheila, we call up our friends and we said, we’re going to build these facilities so we can educate these kids and give them direction to love and this and that. So these kids have massive potential. They are not under pre I don’t like the P word underprivileged. We’re going to do something for the under… Stop right there. They’re not, don’t let don’t let them hear that. So underprivileged give them some privileges, give them some privelage. Don’t just do well. They Excel. The long story of this is we wanted to build these facilities that wasn’t going to wait until these children aged out the system at 18 and 21. We want to push these kids at knots in 11 or 12. What is your dream? What do you want to do? What do you like? What’d you have a problem with? So that by the time the 18 and 19, they’re confident within themselves that they’ll be able to make it. So a funny joke. Um, and, um, Michael Lang, the guy who invented Woodstock is one of the people that’s involved with us. So we go to Michael Lang or we tell him, yo, this is what we wanted this and that. So Michael looks at us and he says, this is a great idea. A Sheila, we excited. Y’all we going to build these facilities and this and that. So he starts explaining to us that there’s a process and there’s things that’s needed. Corinne you know, all of this, you’re not missing. Don’t wake up tomorrow. I mean, it basically like this, Brad and Ashley, and Mike they said, it’s a great idea, but you need to start a little smaller. So if I can have suggested the people we went to suggested, let’s just talk with a sleep away camp for a couple of weeks. For a couple of weeks, we can bring the foster kids into the sleep away camp for the ones that never had access to nature and never left the block and never see squirrels and rabbits and lakes and stuff like that. That’s a good opportunity to give them, you know, as can’t, you know, if you ever went to sleep away, camp experience, like I went to sleepaway camp. When you first go here, I gotta go. I don’t want to come back to get you. You cry. It just gives you an experience. Microsoft said to a sleep-away camp, first of all, it puts all the foster kids who, of course the kids thinking they, the only ones going through those horrible, tremendous traumatic situations that they’re not alone. While they’re there, we could ask them, what do you want to be? Oh, I want to dance. Okay. You’re going to get gas lessons the whole week that you want to do. I want to be a DJ. Okay. We’re going to give you a DJ lessons the whole week. I want to act. We bring in actors, bringing people to teach, acting and drama. So we put all these kids here and we add one little girl said I want to be Oprah. So we brought some people want to be journalists to sit down with the kids for the week. So we, we started the, um, we started, um, a camp, a sleep-away camp called Camp Felix, which we, which we, which we, um, it’s a five week program, a six week program, $500 to send one kid to camp for one week. And during that week, we give them, uh, a camp experience. What we start nurturing the potential. That’s an, oh, I want to be a photographer. Like any Liebowitz, no this stuff. I realize that all kids don’t want to be. When you’re talking about the dudes, all the kids don’t want to be Michael Jordan and rappers, right? These kids have, I want to be a scientist. I want to be a photographer. So the young girl that said, I want to be like Annie Liebowitz, there’s a camera for ya. So she stopped the, so we started the Felix organization 15 years ago with just me, Sheila and some friends. And, um, with 15 years of strong and we also started just to add real quick. We also started Beyond Camp. One of the things that we don’t want to do is the kids that come to the camp. I think they start it’s from 7 to 16. And we see these kids grow up. They come every year, we see them grow up. The sad thing every year of camp is the last day of camp. Like it’s the saddest thing in a lot of the kids, they get nervous about not being able to come when you’re 17, you can’t come to camp no more. So what we did was when they turned 17, they could come back to the camp and work as counselors data to the kids and the kids that walked in the kid’s shoes with the Felix Organization at 35 years old and found out that I was a foster kid. And I was going to say, see, I didn’t get to go through those emotions when I was little, because I had a good family support system. I didn’t have a chance to deal with those issues. So when I got 35 years old and you know, we get ready to go on tour or something, inside my spirit said, nah, before you start this journey of your life, you gotta be right. You know, mental health is a big issue too, you know, with all of it. So I was able to, to something that my mother did for me. And then also I was able to, um, you know, the other thing that I did too, I went to therapy as a grown man. I went to therapy and out of me to stuff that I was holding in, because you know, deep down inside of me, I knew I don’t, my father looks like Bill Cosby. My mother looks like Mrs. Huxtable. My brother looks like Eddie Murphy. Outside of that, there was nothing in a world that you could say I was at McDaniels. And my therapist said, stop labeling yourself as under privilege and different. She said, what makes you so different? I said, cause you know, I’m a foster kid and I’m adopted. She said, you got people around you that love you, right? She said, you wake up every morning. Like everybody, she gave me all of these things. That may mean that’s how we got to talk to these kids. And that’s the end of the whole, the whole thing with the Felix organization. And I’m sure Corryton, y’all do this to their situations, to not define who they are. Look at me, the kid who fortunately was adopted was able to become a DFC, a former adopted foster kids, Sheila Jaffrey, a little girl from the Bronx was able to become one of the greatest cast or directors in Hollywood. So we out here working to, to, to change the world with these children.

Mike:
So Ashley and Brad, actually, if you don’t mind that that reminds me of a question I have for you guys. And I think it’s a good segue, really. Um, I mean it was unbelievable background proposed. That’d be really, but I’m always curious, you know, how these organizations get their names like Corinne, you guys were foster and adoptive families and you changed your name to umbrella. So I’m just curious how, um, that came to be.

Corinne:
Come from. Well, foster, um, foster and adoptive family services. Again, it’s a very, um,

Mike:
It tells you what you do basically, I guess.

Corinne:
it tells you what you do, but it’s very, it’s very generic. And, uh, we do contract with the state of New Jersey department of children and family used to be Dyphus is now CPNP, but we are a separate nonprofit organization and for good or bad people have viewpoints of the state and the work they do. And, um, we would, when families or kids would reach out to us, some of the trust was lacking because they thought we were the state. So we really wanted to differentiate ourselves. And yes, we work with the state, but we’re that liaison between. So we wanted something more creative and Embrella came from, um, sort of, we are the umbrella organization over all these different things that happened within foster care. Um, and our tagline is empowering, um, embracing and empowering families were there to support them. But there were also so much of what you, what you just said, empowering them to get beyond again, what they went through. Um, and I just kept nodding my head and smiling when you were talking because so much of what you said, Darryl is so much of what is the good part of foster care and what we need to focus on there because for so long. And when I said there’s been a lot of changes over the past four years and I’ll let him talk about, cause I’m curious where Felix came from too, but just a couple of different things that you said when you talked about, and I’m sure you’ve known this now, but with all the kids we work with, it’s trauma, they’ve gone through trauma regardless of what it is. And when you had said, even before you knew that you had been adopted or in foster care, you felt there was something wrong. Your body holds that trauma, even if you don’t know, and even if you were a baby taken away, it’s there. And until you it’s going to keep coming up until you figure out how to deal with it. And that’s what a lot of these kids are dealing with. I also love the language piece. Language is so important. I mean, again, you go to and we work with the state, well, the placement, it’s not a placement, it’s a child. It’s the language that has to, of how you, it’s not a placement, it’s a child. Or like you said, kids aren’t, or they aren’t damaged or whatever it is. And it’s they take it in themselves. And that’s what the community looks at them as well. And the last piece, and you’re obviously living, this is again, we call it people with lived experience again. Yes, I can run an organization. I know how to do those business pieces and all that headaches that you talked about, but I was not in foster care. So when we looked to put in a new program or we look to make changes, we have a group of, um, either foster families or children that are in care or were in care to say, does this make sense? What do you need? What is really going to be helpful? Because they know better, you know, better than any of us, what is truly needed and what’s going to work. It’s not. And again, they all have their places, social workers, therapists, all those people, no question. But you need to go to those with lived experience and say, what worked for you? What didn’t work? How can we serve you instead of telling them that we know better. So just so much you said was great.

Darryl:
Yeah, exactly. Saying the Felix thing is really funny correctly. We’ve got so much in common and we notice everybody out there working with these foster care agencies. It’s a lot of us and everybody’s working for the same goal. The cool thing is when we start coming together, because then we realize we don’t walk in the same streets, same places dealt with the same kids and families. But I was came about for being Sheila. We like to simplify things like, oh, we hire great people, such as yourself to run like, well, in order for us to do what to camp, we had to, um, partner with the New York Family, the New York Foundling, because we don’t know where to get the kit. You know what I mean? Sheila just really thought we could go get foster kids and do it ourselves, but there’s rules and regulations, but we want it to, um, um, and I guess they have to like to do, like you said, or in the name Embrella, you’re protected people from the storm. You know what I’m saying? That you need to, in these situations, the kids, the families, and everybody involved need to be able to relate to what’s going on with these kids. Even though we have never walked in their shoes. Like my story is a safe one. That was month old. Mother father brought me home. I was adopted officially when I was five years old. So I didn’t live the life. The majority of these kids go through what? Um, they could just relate to me because I could say, yeah, I was once a foster kid. So what we’d like to do is we’d like to simplify what we’re attempting to do in a way that everybody can understand it. So the name Felix came up from this. We said, how about we describe what we are doing? So Sheila, she’s brilliant too. She says, well, we want to make our mascot for the Felix organization, a dog that was adopted by a cat family as a puppy. So what happened was once we came up with this idea, this dog gets adopted by that family. And he starts, comes up with the family. They showed him love and everything like that. But then it gets to a point as he’s getting older, he starts noticing he’s different. You don’t do the things that cats do. You don’t mess with y’all you don’t like milk. You know what I’m saying? They go me out and he starts barking. You know what I’m saying? And the thing that broke the ice was if a cat family is, want to name a dog, they’re not going to get, because they don’t live the dog life then up on the name of Fido or Rover. So this cat family after Felix the cat. So we said, okay, we going to still be camp Felix. And then it wasn’t a little while later that, um, uh, one of the social workers at the New York Foundling, she said, um, how could things fall into place? So beautifully? Like everything that we did was just falling into place. You know, even throughout all of my stories, Sheila’s story to people with what’s even a kid’s story where she said, feel, it means happy to at least not be Dodd it’s it’s a place. We didn’t know that. So we’re just trying to bring happiness to these kids in this situation, the kids. And another thing is the kids had a family. One thing I, Felix, we do is we don’t just nurture the kids. We nurtured the family. It don’t make sense to fix the kid and you don’t fix what’s going on in the family. So we try to involve the families. But Felix came about because, um, we had to give an example of what we’re doing. So Felix is a name of a dog that was adopted, by – fostered by a cat.

Mike:
You’re talking about the animals, Corinne?

Corinne:
I was just going to say that. Our, our, our logo and our mascot is an otter. And people always like why an otter. But if you look up otters, otters are known in the animal kingdom for taking in baby otters that have been abandoned or their parents have died. And again, it’s what kids, a cute otter we have step-daughters I think Mike has one actually. So yeah, so it all comes back to the cute animal logo.

Brad:
It’s coming up with a way to relate as well as to provide, you know, what you’re about and using, you know, using that. I think, I think drives the point home in a, in a subtle way. So I think that’s

Darryl:
Okay. One of the things that I get, and I guess a brother knows this too, what we try to do is we try to remove the, I gotta, I gotta Rob I’m one of the greatest rappers of us. So if you remove guilt and shame, you remove the, you know what I’m saying? We don’t want these people to be ashamed of this situations. We don’t want them to feel guilty about what they’ve been through. That’s why it’s good to do it in a community setting. You know, um, a lot of times at the camp, these kids help me more than I help them. It’s it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. So what can we do better when you’re doing, you know, what can we make better during the process and will tell you in a minute, and what’s powerful, this of shook her and you notice too, a lot of the kids that come to camp feel it’s, they make it to college, they get their degrees, you know, they, they go to school. They, um, they think computer whizzes, they think they, they, they, they find a, like the final occupational position. But one of the funny things that we started seeing happening in the first five years of our campus, a lot of these kids would get accepted to colleges and universities and community colleges all across the board. And a lot of them will go in and eventually they would change their majors. They would go in and have, you know, scholarships. And they would go in with the plan of being doing this. And then we would, you know, speak to them a few weeks later, a few months later and we would be saying, oh, why did you change your major? A lot of the kids would change their majors to be judges, social workers and lawyers. And we would ask them, yo, why are you doing it? They would say so that I could be input. So I can go back and help the kids who are going to come through the foster care system. And we saw that as something powerful. And that came about because when the little kids first came into camp, they don’t trust us because they heard the same thing over. I’m here to help you this and that. So they looking at you like, yeah, right. This is not just telling the kids what to do is showing them what to do. So at camp feel, it’s like we’re bringing in lawyers, doctors, entertainers, play rights for tough. They see a whole world of opportunity. And then once they connect one of those things, you know, whatever career they choose, the kids, make sure this is just something in this career that will allow me to come back and help the kids that were in my situation. It was like, wow. So the majority about children on that character, the camp all want to be lawyers. So two words, the judges, why, so I can go back and help the kids. That’s going to come to the system. And that’s a powerful statement. And that’s the thing that builds a better world. That’s one of the most proud things that we have..

Mike:
That’s a really good culture at the camp. If the kids are, you know, if the kids are thinking that way, I mean, that sounds like an amazing culture. That’s at the camp.

Darryl:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Corinne:
Absolutely true right now have our, um, private scholarship programs and we have the kids have to either be in or have been in foster care in order to apply. And I literally am sitting in reading 75 applications with, you know, they have to write an essay and I want to give a million dollars to every single kid. But of course I have to narrow it down with the amount of money that we have, but that’s so true. I’d say the vast majority of them want to be something that is going to, so they can go back and help the kids. Uh it’s it’s so right on. Um, and the other piece that’s so interesting and goes to what Daryl said too, about looking beyond what you went through. We have some folks that will work with the kids that are applying to school, um, on their college essays. And of course, you know, the college essays, they always ask what was the most, you know, meaningful time in your life or a difficult time. And a lot of the kids want to write about what they went through. Um, and we have these wonderful writing coaches that will work with them and say, yes, of course that’s a part of your story, but you want to focus on how you got through it and over it, not just on the, the, the bad piece yes. That happened. But right now you’re applying to college, look what you’re doing, look where you’re going. So it’s looking at the resilience, the strength that these kids have. And like you said, I’m inspired every day. I feel like in my career with nonprofits is, you know, I got into it because I wanted to help people, but I, you know, sometimes you feel like I got more out of it and then what you put in it’s so true.

Ashley:
I was just going to say, you’re helping the kids connect the dots where like, Darryl, you were trying to connect the dots later in life. And you’re like, there’s this missing piece. And now you’re helping them do that at a younger age as well. So

Darryl:
Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Mike:
I find the, I find the two organizations interesting because of, I guess from a funding perspective now, I don’t really know. I mean, we work with Embrella, so I understand Embrellas funding or financing.

Corinne:
He knows our funding better than I do.

Mike:
So, you know, so your funding coming from the state of New Jersey and how dependent you are on government in order to run your programs, um, you know, and run them in a way that the state can’t run, um, quite frankly, right. Comparative to the Felix organization, which I don’t really know much about, you know, the financing structure, but I wonder, I mean, I assume that it’s probably mostly private donations, but I just wondered how, you know, being basically, you know, the pioneer of hip-hop, um, you know, how that helps you obviously, or helps you as a board member, you as a founder, you know, generate funds for the organization. Um, so it’s just, it’s amazing how different the two of you go about the way, by the way you finance, what do.

Darryl:
I mean, we basically got to raise everything ourselves. We just recently got into getting grant writers and applying, or, I mean, um, foundations and organization, that award that look at every year, they look, we want to give a bunch of money to 20 organizations do and stuff. So in the last couple of years, Mike, we just started applying, you know, Pete was a deep, coolest person, this and that. So the make the main way we rose it is ourselves. Just, you know, um, um, grinding, you know what I’m saying? Out there, Buster contacting people, but what also gets us over to it’s it’s really good that, um, it’s really good that it’s me DMC, but not from the DMC standpoint. Because when you look at me, you gotta understand Run DMC was a part of entertainment culture. For what we did is, is, you know, it’s no, what really gets people is people feel like they know me. You know what I’m saying? But think about my life. My whole life was always on my record DMC and a place to be. I went to St. John’s university. I love eating chicken in the car, me and my sneakers. So everybody knew about me. Everything the world knew about me was all I knew about. So when this revelation came upon me, but what’s shocking to people is hold up. I thought, oh, what DMC adopted? The DMC was a foster kid. And what happens is all the foster care people, all the people who dealt with foster care, all the people that know somebody was foster kid in foster care themselves. Start coming out the woodwork, for instance, Dante called episode a football player. What can I do to help you? Because I never told anybody this I did a lot in my career. I’ve never told anybody that Rosie Perez, when I put it out there, that I was adopted all of these other people who were ashamed to talk about it started coming up to what worked, what do you not do? What can I do? But on the other hand, of course, my name helps Darryl McDaniels is calling IBM. Cause I want to see if you make a donation to our organization, they put me to the lowest person on the team on the phone. So they put me on a whole lot. They go to the boss, boss, some guy out there must be DMC for run DMC, excuse me. So yeah, it’s me the devastating bike, a chola. I’m not, you know what I’m saying itself? That helps a lot.

Mike:
Now that’s doesn’t work for me. I’m on the board of the Joseph H for, I caught up Adidas wants Daryl. And they were like, so I got nothing.

Darryl:
Next time he calls say yo DMC is on the call with me. That helped a lot in a, another cool thing is, um, we don’t do stuff in the Hollywood way. Like every year we do build country barbecue in New York city. When I heard about what we was doing, every Thanksgiving, they give us the restaurant to give a Thanksgiving dinner to the foster kids and their families. And they’ve been doing that for 15 years straight. Sheila just mentioned to this cast of the Sopranos and mark Walberg and of what we was doing. And they come every year to serve the kids. And what they like about it is we don’t make an announcement to the press. We don’t have a red carpet, just no pop or Razzi, you know, imagine a little kid sitting there talking with the gossip, um, for the Sopranos entourage. But it’s not, they’re not looking at these guys. Like they they’re, they’re not looking at the so-called celebrities around us as celebrities that are above them. They’re looking at these people as one of them, with the possibilities of what they would be. So for us, um, the most work that we do is the majority of funds. It’s just by help donate, you know, doing little, we do two or three events a year and stuff like that. But I think our grassroots approach of saying our relationships to these kids have nothing to do with flesh and blood. These are your kids, just as much a job. The other thing is this to Mike, I forgot to tell you it is courage. The people that help support feel it’s children, their children, once they get involved. So they could do something for the foster kids. I’m talking about, they come up with, we now have a board of kids, the normal kids. So we can say, yo, we don’t plan it, but what are y’all doing? And it’s beautiful is that the kid will look felt differently about itself because she was a foster kid sitting there with kids that was never in foster care adoption, getting it on and acting or holding hands and walking out. I’ll call you tomorrow, see you later. So powerful, so powerful.

Corinne:
That’s great.

Brad:
Yeah. In everything. I think that, you know, that, that we’ve learned even today, just here in here in your, your S your story, Darrow and Kerryn, you know, there’s a lot, a lot to do with personal connection, a lot to do with, with, you know, you, I know Dale, you mentioned tailoring the approach and Korean, you know, there there’s a wide variety of, um, programs and services. There’s not one, one thing that helps any one person, uh, from what I gather, I guess, you know, the, the world’s changed a little bit, but, but current, from your perspective, and just, just, you know, how you create that personal connection today and how you continue to do that, you know, what, what have you learned in the last year, I guess, and, and how you’ve kind of modified your approach and, or, you know, what should we all be thinking about? Um, you know, cause obviously, um, mental health and, and depression affects many people and, you know, being isolated is not easy, you know, how do you, how do you help in that scenario? How do you continue to, to, to make connections, um, you know, in this, in this environment we’re in,

Corinne:
Yeah. This past year has been tough, you know, no doubt about it. Um, you know, I’m so proud of the staff at umbrella because we were able very quickly, we didn’t miss a beat. We’re able to move everything virtual. It is definitely not the same. Um, and not as good as being like you said, being in person, but at least we were still able to be there. Um, and just, you know, think about our lives. You know, our lives were turned upside down by COVID whether you have kids or you’re all of a sudden working from home, you can’t go out, you’re worried about this or that. Imagine kids that are in foster care or they’ve already been, their world has already been turned upside down before COVID they were removed from everything they knew, put in with strangers, even if they’re lovely, it’s still strangers. And then on top of that, a pandemic hits, maybe they can’t have visitation with their biological families and there’s just even more so it’s just, it’s even harder for, for, for this group. Um, so we’ve been doing as much as we can in providing that sport, uh, sport again to foster parents that have the kids they’re figuring out how they can help them. Um, kids in that age, that late teens to early 20, that aging out age that we say, um, you know, maybe we had them on scholarship in college, but the college has closed down. So now they have nowhere to live. Their meal plan is closed because the cafeteria is closed. So it’s back to basic needs. Again, we have to find them a place to live. How are they going to get their next meal? Where besides all the danger of the pandemic, um, I will give the, the state of New Jersey, a lot of credit. They, they really came through during this past year, as far as funding goes. Um, we were, uh, got a lot of additional funding and instead of saying, all right, you have to prove that you had this or where’s the paperwork, or you have to use it for this. It was here’s this money it’s going directly into your bank account. You use it however you need to. Um, and I think that was really appreciated because, you know, when you talk about the bureaucracy of things and I understand why there is a need for a certain amount of it, um, oftentimes it’s more of a hassle and more work to do the paperwork to get a hundred bucks. And this was a lot more, but so, yeah, so we were able to financially help. We were able to, again, the staff working from home as, again, putting in more and more hours, calling every single, um, youth on our list to make sure they had what they need calling them 20 times, email texting, again, depending on how they’re going to reach out, Facebooking them, whatever it took to get in touch with them and making sure they had what they need. So yeah, this year has been tough. Um, we have been able to do all we can, but we’re definitely looking forward. And I’m sure, um, as everybody is to a time when we can be more one-on-one with them, because that, that personal connection means so much. Um, but of course, zoom, you know, all those different things, social media, thank goodness for that. So at least you can have that face-to-face, um, meetings with people, but it has been a tough year.

Darryl:
And just to add to that real quick, a hundred percent, right? The virtual thing helped out. It’s not insane, but it, it definitely helped out. Um, for us, with our fundraiser, we did a couple of them. We did a couple of lab virtual concerts. I mean, it’s not as elaborate as going to the venue and, you know, do you want to fundraise it? It, but people, since we were isolated, you couldn’t move around. People was looking forward to do stuff. So we did everything for me, rap it to Broadway, people for Broadway coming on, performing and stuff like that. So the virtual allowed us to have contact, but it’s something very special that Kerryn said, communication is the key, staying in touch with them by phone calls and checking up. Um, a lot of people get very, very nervous when it comes to something like foster care, which is a huge responsibility. You gotta be willing to sacrifice, and you gotta, you know, you taking these kids and you, you deal with you, you become part of this situations. And, uh, a lot of times, um, what it, what in a, what allowed us to get through this pandemic, because it was just unexpected. And, you know, we don’t, we don’t have to, you know, we’re not this big network organization that, you know, everything is at the back of the call. But, um, one of the things that we tell people that makes them makes it easier to want to support, want to be hands on or want to just all be affiliated or part of what it, what it means to deal with these foster kids is mentorship is huge. And what we learned for being a mentorship is the thing that got us. I mean, we had as much anxiety as the kids and the kids are the ones going through it. So we, we don’t want to fail them. But mentorship came in when we first started the Phillips organization to get people to, to support and help out, we said, okay, you don’t have to jump on a bandwagon and be in foster care. Why don’t you just be a mentor? And a mentor just means, find a kid, a boy, or a girl. And you know, once a week, take the kid core, walk, take them to a movie. You don’t take, ’em take ’em to a plate, take them to the opera, whatever, whatever. But few times during the week have communication with the kid. What changes a kid’s life is hearing this three or four times a week. Hello, yo, what’s up? I’m just calling the call. I’m just calling to check up on you. I’m rooting for you. I’m here for you or telling a kid in a time, any time you need to talk to somebody is my number. You can call me, oh, you should get it. So those little things that we did while we was able to be engaged with the kids came through now, because now we can only see each other on zoom. And like you said, it’s not the same thing, but at least each other get API. The other thing was calling the families, calling them mothers and fathers calling the foster parents. Y’all all right. Communication is key in the survival of the children. And communication is key to help us corroborate and the social workers and the, even a check writer, people, we made sure to keep notes back to the people that do give us the big donations and stuff like that. And it just, it’s, it’s just a beautiful thing to have communication with the kids. And the reason why that’s important is we want the kids to open up if something crazy happens because this pandemic it’s sad, or this pandemic hit, and we lost two kids to suicide. I mean, everybody was crushed. And one of the kids was a counselor at the camp last year. Why was that? The kid? It wasn’t showing no signs of anything being wrong. And like the red said, now they’re probably stuck in whatever situation that was, you know, whether it was family, whether it was whoever, somebody in the streets, they was stuck in that situation to have as much contact with them. So now we’re trying to even build up our communication more to where we try to make sure that the adults, when we around these kids, we want the kids to hear the other adults talking about the difficulties that they have as a belt. Because I told the kids, I said, rules, regulations, and following orders. And you know, when the bell rings, get on lock, put your hand up. I said, yo responsibility. Doesn’t the responsibility that joke to its young people does not end. When you get out of high school. I said, you can ask any adult in here. It gets worse. So we’re trying to get the kids to understand that they have the ability to handle what they go now. And they show that this is what we want. We wish that, um, I forgot the kid’s name would have opened up and said, I’m going through this right now. And a lot of the times the kids don’t, once you get comfortable with a kid and everything’s going right, a lot of times the kids don’t want to break through that blockbuster issue because they don’t want to upset you and bother you. So the beautiful thing is community contact is good, but communication, isn’t engaged with these kids and families know that’s one of the things that we learned during this pandemic, just even more that we gotta do, because we don’t, we don’t want to lose these kids to suicide. We don’t want to lose these kids to the streets. A lot of the kids at the beginning of the epidemic that we was dealing with, wasn’t doing their homework and wasn’t doing their studies because now they have to computer. They want to send it to computer, do their work. They want to go play the video game. They’re going to go look at, you’re going to go look at Instagram and all of that stuff like that. So every time that we would have a zoom gathering and stuff like that, we drove that came home, um, direction, correction and discipline goes a long way with these kids. And we try to tell the kids, I’m not telling you that you’re doing anything wrong. Everybody’s not a mess up here and there, you know, we don’t ever let the kids though. We say, we tell the kids, failure is good. Failure goes to learning operatives. The problem is with you doing it that way. So we realized that if we want to be able to talk to these kids as people and show them the examples that they won’t be afraid to follow them.

Brad:
Yeah. Well, I love that message and you know what I hear, I hear a lot and I think just in general, um, you know, inspiring hope in individuals, you know, I think, I think the biggest thing that you find, or that I found just in my own personal life is just a, you need to, you need to have something to have hope for. You need to have something that you can say, okay, it’s not all going to be bad forever, or it’s, something’s gonna get better. And I think having that mentor as you, as you said, Daryl, just on having someone that just calls you, Hey, how you doing? How’s life going? What’s it like, what’s your day? What’s your day? Like, you know, did your parents yell at you today? Good. They should, you know, and just put them in their place when they need to be in their place. But also at the same token, you, you relate to them and give them the, okay, it’s fine. You know, just do better next time. Or I love that message, I guess, from your perspective, just thinking about, you know, how your organization, um, um, helps and, and I guess just, I’m curious, you know, how, how do you go about kind of men mentorship? Because I think that’s, that’s a huge element of, of, of helping individuals as well as how to, how do you engage with those in the public? Like, like if I said, Hey, I want to participate. You know, I love helping people. I want to be a foster parent or I want to be a mentor. You know, how, how do people get engaged or how, how would they work with, with Embrella or, or, uh, just, just in general in the foster care system itself.

Corinne:
Yeah, absolutely. And just to back up what you were all saying, I mean, there is tons of research and studies out there that shows, you know, they look at kids that have gone through trauma or horrible childhood or whatever it is and what made the difference between the ones that came out on the other side and the ones that didn’t. And I don’t want to say all it took, but all it took was just one adult in their life. One stable adult who gave him those messages. It could be a teacher, it could be a coach. It could be a family member. It could be the lunch lady. It could be whoever, but they just need that one person that keeps doing those that you were just saying. And that is what it took to get them through. Again, we hope they have more than one, but all it takes is that one. So like you said, it doesn’t even necessarily have to be a volunteer opportunity just in your own life as you come across kids. Cause you never know what they’re going through for whatever it is. Um, just being that positive, strong source and giving them those positive messages and being there for them. Um, but yeah, so we have a couple of different options as far as mentoring. Um, we do mentoring both for, um, foster parents because we talked about how important it is for them. So often the kids that end up going into foster care or staying in foster care, they have a lot of challenges because they have had so much trauma. So it’s, you know, there’s, um, there’s medical issues, there’s behavioral issues, there’s mental health issues. So, and parents really need to be prepared on how to adequately help these kids and support them. So we actually have a mentoring program for, um, current foster parents, you know, who have been in, who have been doing it for a while and doing it well, I should say, but they can mentor new foster parents coming into the system, um, you know, who want to be there and want to help, but, but, you know, well, I don’t know what an IEP is, which is a, you know, a school plan for someone that has some learning disabilities. How do I deal with this? How do I advocate for my child in the school system to make sure they get what they need? Or how do I make sure that they’re not overmedicated? Or how do I make sure they get medication if they need it? I mean, it, it’s overwhelming to think about all of this. Um, so that’s, that’s a piece of what we do. And then we do have mentors also. Um, we actually have staff they’re called coaches. Um, but they specifically work with, um, kids 16 to 22. So it’s, it’s that age range of getting ready for college in college and helping with all those different pieces. Um, you know, it’s all right, you got into college, but how do I don’t know how well, you know, I don’t know how to boil an egg. I don’t know how to absolutely. I don’t know how to balance a checkbook. I don’t know how to do all these things that usually, you know, you would hope parents might teach you. So helping them go through that whole process of figuring those things out, um, you know, and they, they can reach out to us. You know, I can give you, um, our website, that sort of thing. Cause we do, we have people that will call. And again, there’s so many, you’re becoming a foster parent. You are taking on a lot of responsibility, as you said, but there are other ways that you can get involved and help these kids without becoming a foster parent where you’re with them 24 7. Um, so there is a lot of support there. Um, and in New Jersey, actually the number of kids in foster care because they are focusing a lot more on preventative work or, or, you know, helping families again, removing a child from their family is traumatic. The most traumatic thing for a child is their parents dying. Number two is being separated from your family. And even if it’s necessary, even if it’s for their safety, you know, you always hear it’s similar with domestic violence. It’s it’s, they don’t want their parents to go away. They want them to stop the abuse or stop. So they love their parents. Um, and I think a lot of people think that if a child is removed from, uh, their biological family, it’s that horrible, horrible abuse that you hear about. Those are small, small number of the cases and those kids absolutely need to be taken out. Oftentimes it’s neglect, it’s due to poverty. It’s due to mental illness is due to drug and alcohol abuse by the parents and those parents, you know, and instead of traumatizing the children more or permanently, let’s use the funds to help that family get hold so that those kids can stay there. But in those situations as well, you think of big brothers, big sisters, it sounds like you’re doing similar work. Um, Darryl with having mentors for those kids that are dealing with a lot, but they can have that other stable adults. So there are so many different ways to get involved, um, beyond being an actual foster parent.

Darryl:
Yeah. And just to add to that real quick with the Phillips organization, we’re fortunate over the last 15 years to just be in a vicinity of being able to connect or beat people like Corinne, what helps Felix a lot is, um, you know, for example, here in what you’re saying, correct. Oh, I just learned a lot. So now I can go to Felix and say, you’re a man or this, this lady named Corrine does wonderful work. We get a lot of support from, you know, for, for example, the fresh air fund, um, big brother, big sister of other organizations, um, you know, just people in the business who else has, um, um, who else do we deal with fresh air fund? Oh, the New York city department that, uh, New York state court sample who owns all the parks in bear mountain, what we was doing, it was called us up and say, Hey, would you like to say, bring some kids to the experience the park. So I think for the Felix organization, if there’s a situation where we’re starting to deal with kids, aging out the system, we’ll go directly to umbrella. So your umbrella, when you need help, we’re not afraid this, but I guess that’s called networking. Or one of the new things that just recently came up is the, um, the LGBTQ children in the foster care system. That’s a whole nother level that we had no idea about. So, um, two years ago we do a, we do a smallest a two week camp and it’s a two week camp just for the LGBT community people and stuff like that. And that came about that it was already working with these kids. So what are the things that we learned, um, at this organization and as a business model, the humble you don’t know at all, and you gotta be like, if we do, if, if, if we need to, if we have a particular initiative, you know, the Felix organization, we don’t want to be the known as, so don’t do that with Felix. Cause they going to keep all the money for us about the money it’s about using the money to make sure we could do, like you said, there’s a lot of issues were coming up. The kids are great, but that Al oh, these families out of here. So we will have to work with some people who know how to deal with families and with debt. So you’ve got to be very versatile and you always gotta, you always gotta know, I’m sure curette, every day, as long as you’ve been doing this and every day we learn something new, we could be doing one of our business models. It is not in a shape to share the profits. They’ve been glory and not feel not, don’t not eat, do not have an ego where we can know our levels to get what’s needed to be done accomplished. So we were fortunate yet. So many organizations, foundations check writers and people that want to support, you know, we’ll, you know, there’s people that, uh, man, I can’t be mentor without write the check for the mentoring or mentorship program. I don’t know. I’m not sure about this. You know, um, also recently we’ve been dealing with a lot of issues, especially here in New York city. The middle school kids used to be at the high school kids at the boat. The kids are acting out and being me. Uh, one of the things that we learned bike was this. You think little dudes have bullies girls, girls just want to do, you know, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t just want to disrespect the next girl. They want the other girls that stuff to hurt. So, you know, I feel like there’s a lot of us do. We don’t know how to deal with all of that. But we found ourselves as may on a classes, on a program it’s taken me it’s with a lot of female. So they teach us how to deal with this stuff, sets up and doing it. I can understand now I’m getting ready to work. There’s an organization called children’s village. I spoke at a couple of minutes now, but just from me speaking at their events a couple of years ago, there was just certain stuff that I said, just like me and Corinne going back and forth that I said this. So they’re starting a program to deal with the females in the foster care system because they got to fight in may. And they say, well, most of the time when we, when we speak in these kids, if you do say run the obscene, if they don’t know your music directly, dear mothers, fathers, it’s the funny part. So when you come in and these kids, they want to be in, uh, so they think hip hop is all gangster and being ignorant, this and that, we say no pop is going to college. If I was not being in a gang, hip hop is working much at differences without fighting the stab. And so with fraud and that, I guess the word is synergy. I find a lot of synergy and synonymous motives by working and educating ourselves and asks me for help, for love of foundations, organizations, and companies.

Brad:
And that collaboration, collaboration in the profit space is huge. And I will tell you that when we started this podcast two years ago, one of the first episodes, one of my, one of my clients is in, is in a similar space to Eukarin. And they called me and they’re like, Hey, we heard one of your episodes. And we’re actually now getting some of our individuals in our programs involved with, you know, one of the, one of your guests you had on, they have a glassblowing art studio in, uh, in north. And so they started bringing, you know, they, they, they connected with, with, uh, um, the executive director that was, that we had, uh, in the interview. And I was like, that was why I did this. I was like, you know, you would never know the connections that you would make other than just having a conversation. And you know, like, I love that. I’ve loved that Mike invited both of you here because you know, you may not have known each other before this, but now, now you do. And I imagine you’ll probably work together in the future, which is awesome.

Corinne:
I’m planning on reaching out because we have scholarships for camp and I saw your camps and we only have one we work with. So I’m like, we need to make that connection.

Darryl:
For sure. And then vice versa, whatever I can do for Embrella.

Brad:
And secondly, I have a two and a half year old daughter, so I know exactly what you’re saying right now.

Brad:
I literally we call her a bully and I hate saying this publicly, but I have a four and a half year old son. And, and, and you know, one day she just, she suplex them. She literally picked them up like this. And I’m like, how does that even happen?

Mike:
National wrestle, you have her watching Brad.

Brad:
I know, unfortunately I’m sitting there watching macho man, the elbow in there, she copies it. I’m like, yeah, well, exactly,

Darryl:
Exactly. It’s a lot that we can learn. It’s a lot that we can learn from each other, no matter what age you are, no matter what your situation and, um, you know, and here’s, what’s really crazy too. It wasn’t till about seven years ago, that all, once I started dealing with the New York fail land, and what’s the story of dealing with the barriers of various various agencies in New York city, about seven years ago, I learned all Hollis Queens, new, where I grew up was a big of a place where they place foster kids. I didn’t know that. And so people always ask me, D, what would you, what would anything had been different? Um, if I would have found out that I was adopted and I was a foster kid earlier, I said, you know, probably so I would probably start it on this mission earlier. What, the reason why I had to go this way was the DMC thing set up for what Darryl was really put here to do. Oh, wow. That’s so crazy. Because you know, especially coming from hip hop, if pop is a thing that’s center in the streets and the misconception is that there’s, this street thing that is, is, is, is, um, is, um, detrimental to the survival of our youth police, boys and girls in the foster care system. It’s also a global thing. What I’ve started realizing when I came out with my story, I started getting letters and feedback from yo I’m an orphen from Yugoslavia. I’m a kid from Germany up from, um, um, from Mintmark yo, this stuff that I get it’s like, people would always say, oh, you do the good thing. And they always use that. You’re doing a good thing for us. You’re doing a good thing for us. I only thought that, um, only thought that I was just going to be enforced to kit. I had no hope until I saw there were others like me. I heard like we get a lot of letters from kids that say, I’ve never knew that there was a program. I just want to progress there’s programs that take the kids on tours of colleges and universities. So they can see the campuses. They do that with a lot of foster kids. We had no idea that, that, that, that, that, that existed. So now a lot of the kids from camp Felix can hook up with these agencies and programs. If there were like, you know, you want to get out the hood. If you go to school in Syracuse, you ain’t in the hood no more, but they need that. They need to experience that. So therefore the Felix Organization needs access to like current. So we have somewhere that the kids can go, right. I mean, that sounds to me like, it’s, it really reminds me of the importance of outreach really.

Mike:
You know, we, you said D in terms of, um, you know, these children who may need something that don’t know something’s available, you know, just even in my adult life at 44 years old, I mean, there are certain things that I don’t think of until it’s right there in front of me. I’m like, oh yeah, I could use that. You know what I mean? Exactly. Words of outreach to say, Hey, you know, here we are, we do this type of thing. We take kids to colleges whose families don’t take their kids to college, help you with that.

Darryl:
That’s the, that’s the importance of it. Yeah. So we, you know, we’re all working for the same things and you know, the whole, the whole thing with the foster care kids too, is this, all of them have a potential. All of them have the abilities to capabilities and all of them have everything necessary for them to succeed. And I think, um, everyone starts with that. If everyone starts with that first, regardless of the boy or girl situation, I think it would, it would, it would, um, add to the billion stories of the good things about the foster care system. One of the things that Sheila is that we want to prevent and alleviate all the horror stories. Like you said, some of the abuse is just not physical. Some of the abuse, um, the foster care foster care kids are worth money. So a lot of legal get foster kids just to get a check and you can look and say, whoa, why’s his sneakers and his posts like that. And the kids who are the blood kids that have, y’all heard the tip about the kids being chained up and put in cages and put in it. That’s what we’re trying to do. We want to just create a law where, um, a lot of foster kids have told us that when, when the, um, the social workers or the agencies do their checkups, a lot of kids told us, yo, my foster care mother and father said, when that social worker comes to the house, she makes sure you tell them everything’s okay. So the kids will be safe. It’s like the only option is to sit there and go away because they don’t want to be in a rain or runaway. So we just want to make it, make it to where the kids don’t have to go through these stars stories. A lot of people who do the fell, they took abuse, the kids, wherever it’s physical, sexual, mental, or financial, they said, no, the government don’t have a, have a right to come take down my door. Any, we want to do surprise visits. We want to do some profits. And when they don’t know, you know, cause a lot of times your code, we would like to come and say, no, don’t come Wednesday, come Friday. So between Wednesday and Friday, they cleaning stuff up. We don’t want, we want to kick the door open, but you can come kick my door. If you ain’t got nothing to hide and we got the money to pay for your door, what’s your beef. So we look at if it’s okay in a household. So there’s a lot of things that we want to do to alleviate the process, which for a Felix organization, by working with, you know, the, all the organizations that deal with the little kids that deal with the LBGQ that deal with the kids, aging out. Now we learned a whole spectrum of what it’s like for the foster kids, because you know, one of the things that I noticed and Sheila will visit a lot of the foster kids and uh Corinne, you probably can relate to this. A lot of Tasmania. Sheila goes somewhere and not the counselors with the staff will come over to me, whisper yo DIA, Sheila. And they’ll point to your girl, watch out for that one. And they’ll use that kind of words. Like watch out for that one. And when like, you know, what do you mean that one? And that’s the kid that’s violent. That’s the kid. That’s the kid. That’s got to have the, um, you know, the counselors, you know, on standby. So every time we hear that being Sheila spot, that’s the first person we want to talk to the kid who got the most support. We sit down with them and we just sit there and we talk to them and we kick in and we tell our story. And 99.9% of the kids say this, this is what’s powerful. If it’s a boy or girl, nobody ever asked me that one, nobody never asked me. That’s why they Elon. Cause they got something they want to talk about. Nobody’s talking to them about a one time we went to the foster care agency and it was just this one kid who was like this, my old school, you know, he got the it. Cause he was the little kid. It’s like just a whole thought. And he’s listening to me talking about hip hop. And you know, I didn’t say, I ain’t say nothing about gang banging. I see nothing about drugs. I ain’t say nothing about jail. I told him, yo, I was a kid growing up. I love comic books. I love rock and roll and the Beatles. And I’m saying all this the whole time. And I’m telling you, if you think I was able to do what I have done, when was time for me to do it, imagine what you’re able to do. So after the whole talk, I’m getting ready to leave. And counselor comes over to me and says, yo, when want to speak to you and I’m looking at the Kelsey, you got this puzzled look on his face. He’s like, he’s never asked to speak to anybody. We brought him. So walk over to the kid when he’s standing there. And you know, th th the bouncer securities, it’s like looking at funny, cause he’s reaching in his pocket. So the bounce is like you, is he going to pull out a shake or something like this? He reaches in his back pocket. He pulls out some folded up paper. And the kid goes, Joe, I’ve never told anybody this because nobody ever asked me about these things. He says, DMC, would you read my poem? The poem out? And I read this, oh, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. And I say, yo, why have you never told? He said, first of all, nobody never asked me this. It was cool. And I was like, yo, this is brilliant, man. I said, you said you should write and share your poetry with the people up in here. You never know who a couple of months later, Mike, they said, yo, this kid that wrote portfolio’s volumes of poetry. He sharing with the other kids and other kids inside the group, home books forward taking words because it changed the way they think about themselves. Like if they would have never brought me to talk about your writing and education and creativity in school and stuff like that, he would have him every night he’s in his cell or whatever it was, it was a group detention facility. So he’s going back into the system. I think going back to the same house, he said, I got moved from none home. So I’ll be in the middle of school and they come and I’ve seen some what? They put all my stuff in a plastic garbage bag. Oh, one more thing. That’s beautiful too. So when the kids or families who are not foster kids about what kids go through, we have one little girl she made, um, duffle bags, all the kids and forced the kids. So that one, they get moved. None of their stuff gets put in a plastic bag.

Corinne:
The backpacks. Exactly.

Darryl:
Right, right. So it’s just, it’s just those stories that happen. A presence in all of this leads to greater things behind, even your comprehension, as a mentor, as a foster care parent, as a worker, whatever you do in these agencies is always an opportunity for you to do something great.

Corinne:
Yeah. And I will, I will shoot you an email Daryl, but just when you were talking about the writing piece, there’s an organization in New York city and there’s also an organization, New Jersey. And they specifically do writing with kids. I don’t know, in New York it’s youth communications. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. And they specifically do classes, workshops. They publish things, kids that are in foster care, go and write. And some of them, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the author Edwidge Danticat but she actually was a student there. And as now is like this award winning writer, but they do amazing work, but it’s writing in different types of arts specifically for that. So yeah.

Darryl:
They need an outlet. They need an outlet to let out all that frustration. Yes. I think that, I think that’s the whole beauty of it, you know, um, 99% of the time, it’s, it’s not about us saying that we’re doing something, it’s being able to allow those kids to do something beyond their experiences and everybody come together. Like, um, I also work with the garden of dreams that go on in the dreams foundation, which is MSG. Um, James Dolan is the next and the Rangers, um, um, the beacon theater, Madison square garden, all the, all of, um, MSGs affiliates and stuff like that. They have an organization that worked with the kids, um, in New York city. And how that came about was I would go to speak. I would go to visit hospitals. I would go to visit foster care agencies. I would go to busy group homes and stuff like that. And every time MSG would show up. They would hit a DMC just left here, DMC till seven. So they kept me in it. So they call me in for a meeting. And it was funny. I realize a lot of the organizations that I was working with here in the tri-state area is organizations, you know, um, foundations in a facilities that the machine work with. So that brought me together with them. You know what I’m saying? So it’s all about just showing up and, um, you know, using me, as Sheila said, she is the great casting director, Sheila Jaffe, for a bigger reason to just being successful in Hollywood, I’m DMC for a bigger reason, there just being a king of rock. But all of us, I think what means she didn’t want to do is show that all of you, no matter who you are, will, you will have an opportunity to change the kid’s life. Cause if you, if, if, if we change the lives of these children, when we’re long and gone, and these kids are in positions of power, when these kids are the ones running everything and managing everything and running the government, they will know what they will have to do. And not think that’s when w when you’re dealing with these kids, now they are the future. Like you started out current. These kids are the future, regardless of this situation. Right. And if we show them that they are and can be, then you know, 50 years from now, it’s a better world.

Mike:
I can’t thank you guys enough for coming on Corinne, Darryl. Um, you know, one thing I will say about Darryl is, you know, I know Darryl from Gold’s gym. Um, he’s the nicest guy. If you guys don’t know this, now he’s the nicest guy at gold gym. I mean, he’s up there on the stepper. He can get a workout in, because everybody’s talking to him, he’s waving everybody being the king of rock, being a bike. Her hip hop has not stopped him from being, you know, just the regular guy platform to help people, um, and Corinne, thank you too very much for coming on. And, you know, I just thought it was a great opportunity to kind of, you know, I know Brad’s podcast and Ashley’s podcast. They always go great. I’ve listened to them. Um, I just thought it would be a great conversation to have two people within the same industry, you know, with different backgrounds, you know, talking to her game and, you know, talking about what’s going on in that industry and you know, what you guys are doing to help the youth. And I think it’s fantastic. I really, really appreciate it.

Darryl:
Thank you, Mike. Thank you Brad. Thank you Ashley. I mean I got the honor. I hope to see you soon in person soon Corinne, and they’ll send me your contacts. I’ll send you mine and let’s do what we can do together.

Corinne:
Absolutely. And we can do more together.

Brad:
Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to subscribe to Civic Warriors and thanks for all your support. Have a great day.