“I’m here for a reason”: After years of loneliness, a YouthBuild alum discovers a new path to success

Isaiah Brown grew up in North Newark near Barringer and Park Avenue.

“I wanted to be cool instead of smart because I didn’t know I could be cool and smart at the same time,” he said. 

After the 10th grade, he stopped going to school altogether and spent the rest of his time hooked on running the streets, going to parties, and using drugs to numb the pain he felt. 

“We thought we knew it all,” he said, but looking back on it, he was living too fast -- losing friends to jail or to violence in the streets, and with so much grief and loneliness, his depression only deepened.

“My father wasn’t around. My mother was always working,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake up in the morning. I didn’t have any goals or anything. Nothing to motivate me. There was nobody around me, talking to me.”

At 20 years old, he took a hard look at his life. No job. No school. No real friends. There had to be more to life than this, he thought. Then one day, he ran into an old friend of his from the neighborhood, but there was something different about him. 

“He was just like me, a wild boy, but he was more attuned in the streets,” he said. “He was going to Uplift, and he told me, ‘You can change. Get your diploma.’”

Uplift Academy was the result of a partnership between YouthBuild Newark, an initiative of Newark Opportunity Youth Network (NOYN) and Newark Public Schools (NPS). After a redesign of NPS’s alternative education program and its alternative school, two district transfer schools combined to form Uplift Academy, where the YouthBuild components of Education, Leadership Development, Support Services, Alumni Success, Construction and other Career Pathways were embedded in a public school. 

So a week later, Isaiah applied to Uplift and immediately started the process of change. The first step on that journey was Mental Toughness, a student orientation that purposefully challenges young people to gauge if they’re prepared to take a new path.

“Far and away one of the most powerful aspects of the YouthBuild model is Mental Toughness,” said Jasmine Joseph-Forman, Chief Program Officer of NOYN. “This allows us to see if young people can show up on-time, follow instructions, tear down their walls and open themselves up to  a community.

Mental Toughness is the place where we build relationships and begin to provide cohesive, safe, supportive peer groups. It is one of the first places where young people are thoroughly exposed to YouthBuild's unique model of high standards combined with love, support and respect. From the moment that Isaiah walked through the door, we knew he was ready for the process.”

For Isaiah, Mental Toughness gave him the connection he has been craving after so many years alone. There, he connected with staff members who would love him just as hard as they challenged him, along with meeting young people just like himself who had their own problems and challenges - just like him.

“It made me feel like I was wanted, like a family,” he said. “It made me feel like I could be a better man. It made me want to be a better person.”

After graduating in 2018, Isaiah now works full-time with the USPS where he continues to practice the YouthBuild tenets of leadership, love, dignity, respect, faith, and community wherever he goes. After so many years of feeling lost, Isaiah knows who he is and where he’s headed.

“Living the life I was living,” he said, “I know I’m here for a reason.”