Uplifting South L.A. by Turning Its Youth into Stars

The young Black man with the ear-length dreads is wearing a brand new, white sweatshirt with MOREHOUSE emblazoned across his chest. In the one-and-a-half-minute video, he is effusive, not knowing exactly how to articulate the depths of his gratitude for South Los Angeles’ Brotherhood Crusade, its staff, and its dynamic leader Charisse Bremond Weaver.

“You guys have given me so much. And I really wish I could repay you,” Rufus says. “But I’m gonna repay you by doing what I gotta do in college. Graduating.”

For Bremond Weaver, whose father Walter Bremond founded Brotherhood Crusade in 1968, and her mentor Danny J. Bakewell, Sr. who led the organization for 35 years, thinking about Rufus and what he represents brings tears to her eyes.

“The video says it all,” Bremond Weaver says. “Oh my God, yes, you are going to finish college. You have got a plan.” And the most important aspect, she says, is that the plan is all about “giving back.”

Situated in the heart of what Bremond Weaver sees as a deeply troubled and neglected South Los Angeles, Brotherhood Crusade is bent on giving young people the tools and the exposure to new experiences that they need not only to succeed in school, but become the doers who will uplift the community she loves so much.

Every year, the nonprofit serves a staggering 3,000 young people, ages 10-24, with a wide array of programs and services. With 14 school-based programs, Brotherhood Crusade is seeing stunning results: 99% will graduate on time, 93% saw their grades go up, and among those with significant barriers to entering the workforce, 94% earned certificates from workforce development programs and another 25,000 South Los Angeles residents with support services through community special projects.

For Bremond Weaver, Brotherhood Crusade’s success is familial. It comes from growing up in a home that she calls “electric,” where her father – a “philanthropist, organizer, and therapist” – and her mother – an educator – made sure all their children had choices. That’s what she wants to give her community and the young people growing up in it.

“I think of my own life,” Bremond Weaver says. “I think of how I was raised, the unconditional love. Like from the time I was five, opening a savings account, to talking about current events at the dinner table, to having opportunities as a child to travel, going to see the theater, the exposure. My parents gave me choices. And I live by that. And so when you think of young people in our community who look like me, I want to expose them to everything possible.”

And even though Brotherhood Crusade’s budget and the scale of its work has ballooned under her leadership, she is far from content. She wants to see real, lasting change in South Los Angeles.

“I love my community,” she says. “I love black people. But I have pain for my community, for what is happening around homelessness and inequity, around how this city looks today.”

Until she can raise the many more millions she needs to do what she knows Brotherhood Crusade can, Ms. Bremond Weaver stays focused on the young people, like Rufus. One at a time.