PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A group of pastors and community allies have been spending some late nights this month on street corners in some of the city’s gun violence hot spots in North Philadelphia. The Corners to Connections program, meant to attack crime at its roots, will wrap up on Thursday.
Each morning in June, members of that street team met virtually with Alyn Waller, senior pastor of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, to discuss their interactions with the community the night before. They came back with stories of people in crisis — but also stories of hope.
Pastor Julius Renwick of Mt. Ephraim Baptist Church in Tioga says one night, when they approached some young men in a car, one of them appeared to reach into his waistband.
“We asked them if anyone was looking for a job,” Renwick said. “We began to talk, and you can kind of see their facial expressions and tension that was initially there kind of subside.”
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Tirzah Cannad, trustee at Taylor Memorial Baptist Church, encountered a young woman on the streets who just needed someone to lend an ear.
“Just opening up about her trauma history and how she grew up without parents and all of the things she had been through — you can tell she had no one else to share that with,” Cannad said.
On one of the nights, the team talked with a young man who had just come home from prison, said the Rev. G. Lamar Stewart, senior pastor at Taylor Memorial. They received a phone call from him moments later.
“He said, ‘I was too embarrassed to share that I had no food in the refrigerator. I have kids at the house, and truth is I don’t want to do anything crazy to go make that money,’” Stewart recalled. “They helped him out, and may have also prevented a crime.”
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On another evening, the Rev. Darren Greenfield, associate minister at Christian Stronghold Baptist Church, said they ran into a man at a bus stop who needed help.
“We were talking to him, and he said, ‘I’m going to be honest with you. My girlfriend was killed out here a year ago, and I’m still grieving, and I haven’t done anything about it but drink.’”
Greenfield said they were able to give the man some counseling.
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Dozens of stories like these emerged from the project.
Stewart, who is spearheading Corners to Connections, says there’s more to come.
“We’ve had a lot of people reaching out, stopping us on corners as we walk along, asking if we can bring this to their neighborhood too,” Stewart said.
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Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal at Mary McCleod Bethune School committed to just one night, but she has ended up going out every night.
“Everywhere that we went, there’s a story, there are people who love their community, there is hope in every corner that we’ve been,” Bradley said.
The program wraps up on Thursday afternoon, with a job fair at Olney Terminal.