The Light in Their Eyes

Simon Cataldo, a REALITY participant, is Founder and President of Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership (HLL). HLL is a school-based nonprofit organization that provides academic intervention, leadership training and lacrosse to at-risk youth. Simon recently launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise money to expand his organization to include programming for girls.

Four small fingers and a thumb are curled around a chain-link fence. They are attached to the body of a boy who is no older than twelve years of age. It is 6:15 a.m. and he’s been waiting on this Central Harlem lot for Lord-knows-how-long. He heckles and taunts my favorite student, thirteen-year-old Namond.

You see the boy is trying to scare Namond into joining his gang. He knows that Namond is, by reputation, the toughest, meanest and maybe smartest boy in school. He knows that Namond is two seconds from snapping at all times, that he lives on a razor-thin emotional edge and that he could leave school for a life of crime at any moment. But not today. Namond puts his head down, nods it when I ask if he did his math homework. Namond always does his math homework.

We’re in class. Namond raises his muscled, scarred arm. Everyone else puts their hands down. You don’t want to be called on when Namond wants to be called on. There is a light in Namond’s eyes that shines incredibly bright. When he knows he has the right answer it explodes and you cannot look away.

X + 12 is correct, I say. Namond smiles and looks around the room.

Namond doesn’t walk up the ramp one morning. He is there the next day, but his braids have been shaved off. Then he misses more school.

He returns from jail about a year and a half later. I’m walking down the hallway. Someone is calling my name and approaching me. “Mr. Cataldo, Mr. Cataldo.” I see a tall body in the distance and I recognize the face but not the person. He comes closer.

The light has gone out from Namond’s eyes. That’s the image I see when I open mine in the morning.

I started Harlem Lacrosse & Leadership because I did not want to live in a world where that scenario perpetually repeats itself, or I just could not look away or both. A couple years of teaching special education to learning disabled and emotionally disturbed children in Harlem taught me that classroom teaching was not enough for many of these kids, and neither was an after-school program. In order to keep the light burning in the eyes of the most troubled children, full-day, year-round intervention is necessary. So our organization put “Program Directors” in schools; they are there in the morning when the children arrive, they assist in the classrooms when the children and teachers need help and they don’t leave until after lacrosse practice at night.

We use lacrosse as the hook, and hold the children accountable for carrying themselves with the intention, dignity and respect we demand of our lacrosse players. Most important, we aggressively recruit the most troubled children in the most difficult schools and make sure they stay in the program.

We have 145 students currently enrolled and almost 300 have participated in the full-time programming. Our kids’ cumulative GPA rises on average between 6 and 10 points per year, and they have earned over $5.2 million in academic scholarship offers in the last three. 100% of our students have graduated middle school on time since 2010, which is not a trivial statistic for the schools in which we work or the population of students we recruit.

Until this summer, something big was missing: girls. A developer in Harlem agreed and put up a matching grant for two years of girl-specific programming. We’re close to raising the other half of the funds through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.com. A group of friends and I, including Eric Lavin, also a REALITY participant, made this 2-minute video and sent it out to our friends and family. After launching the video on Indiegogo, our crowdfunding campaign exceeded our goal in a week, two days before 31 girls (half of the middle school girls at P.S. 149) had their first practice.

I still see light going out before I open my eyes in the morning. But often, when I close my eyes before I go to bed, I see the light in theirs, and that makes me happy, hopeful and grateful for the opportunity to fulfill what I feel to be a deeply Jewish calling to repair the world, tikkun olam.

Read more about Simon in his interview!

The Schusterman Philanthropic Network is proud to empower emerging leaders to explore their values, identity and new ways to strengthen their communities. We believe that as we work together to repair the world, it is important to share our diverse experiences and perspectives along the way. We encourage the expression of personal thoughts and reflections here on the Schusterman blog. Each post reflects solely the opinion of its author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Foundation, its partner organizations or all program participants.