I Am Because We Are
Jeff Robinson
Contributor | My Own Words
A year and a half after my dad passed away, I was in the bathroom and my fingers started shaking. I knew right away.
Parkinson’s.
My dad had Parkinson's Disease and I was very close with him. I knew the disease intimately. I'd been having some trouble for a year and a half while playing ping pong and tennis. I couldn't turn my wrist. I was like, ‘What the heck's going on?’ I knew when my fingers started shaking it was early onset Parkinson's. I tried to hide it for a while. I became stressed because I knew it was going to not only change my life, but the lives of the people around me too.
After 14 years with Parkinson’s my dad passed away. I’ve had it now for 14 1/2 years and I never think that this condition is going to beat me. I never look at life like I have Parkinson's. Sometimes I'm surprised I have it - I feel really good. And sometimes I start moving around pretty good.
Most people know Michael J. Fox - all that moving around is a side effect of the medicine. There isn’t a cure. They just have pills to take care of more pills to take care of more pills. So I do a lot of things to get myself a better quality of life. A lot of supplements. It is what it is.
“I call it, Heads or Tails. I got heads and these kids got tails. ”
As a child, my older brother, who is ten years older than me, was my mentor. I looked up to him. He was always an activist. He was the one helping the small people that had a disadvantage. When I was young, he used to take me down to swap meets or Rams football games in the inner city. I always noticed the poverty. It was right in my face. Like 30 minutes away from I grew up in Beverly Hills. And so I always had a sense of it.
My childhood was as good as it gets. When I was walking to school my only worries were bumping into some girl that I had a crush on - and maybe she didn’t have a crush on me. Or I was worried about when I get the school that I have to be the team captain of that kickball game. I didn’t have to worry whether I was going make it out alive like some of these kids in the inner city.
I wanted to let people know that 30 minutes away is a whole different ballgame. They think it happens other countries. They don't think that in Los Angeles people live like they're living.
These places are a lot different than what I grew up with. I call it, Heads or Tails. I got heads and these kids got tails. And it's the luck of the coin flip, you know.
I was fortunate to get to go to summer camp as a kid. When I got older I worked at two camps. I always loved camp and what it did for people.
When I was nine or ten years old I would always say to my friends, “My dream is to own a summer camp”.
We opened Canyon Creek Summer Camp in 2001. When I started the camp with my business partner Daryl Moss, we had scholarships for deserving kids who otherwise couldn’t afford to come. And we felt good about that.
But I wanted to do more.
So we had a school group come up to camp - Watts Learning Center. Just kids and teachers and we loved that. We worked on developing teamwork, confidence and positive communication.
The kids who came would have a great time, but the parents or guardians didn't understand the full experience. After a couple more camps we realized we needed to bring the parents and people from the community to camp at the same time to make a real difference. They had to experience it with the kids. Otherwise, kids just go right back to the same circumstances. There's nothing really changing long-term at home.
So we started Camp Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is a beautiful word with a beautiful philosophy. Its tagline is, ‘I Am Because We Are’.
The first fundraiser was a bike ride with me and my best friend in New York. We raised $30,000. We thought that was more money than we'd ever raise again. (We were wrong. We’ve since raised almost $7 million in ten years.)
Over time, the Camp Ubuntu program developed into something special. Now, half of our counsellors are formerly incarcerated adults who grew up in the same neighbourhoods these kids grow up in. They work together with some of our summer camp staff. It’s quite impactful.
We do parenting workshops, we bring community members to camp and have workshops for teachers. Everything we do up here focuses on teamwork, family, and trust. These are things the kids don't have, and they think that asking for help isn’t a good thing. We teach that together you can do much more than you can do by yourself. That’s Ubuntu.
We started with schools in Compton, Inglewood, Watts, Morningside and South L.A.. But we learned that when we dib and dab in the communities we never really make the change we want to make. We needed to focus in one area.
So, we had a retreat at camp in 2013 where we brought up the five housing developments from the Watts area to camp. None of them knew the other ones were coming.
It was an epic retreat. I mean, they got off the bus and they were very unhappy that they saw people that from other housing developments.
In their community, if these other kids came onto their side of the block, they’d kill them. So not only did we bring them all up here when none of them knew the other ones were coming, but we mixed them up in the cabins to live, sleep and eat together. It's pretty life changing for them because they start to think, “Why do I hate you? I've been told to hate you because you live on a different block or in a different housing development, but now we’ve spent the whole weekend together and you’re not that bad.”
Literally up until a couple of years ago the kids from each housing development had to walk in a certain gate to enter the school. If you lived in Jordan Downs you entered in one corner. If you lived in Nickerson you entered in another corner. It wasn't safe to walk through the other person's neighborhood. It’s a horrible way to grow up.
So light bulbs are going off and that was kind of our impetus for going into the Watts area and focusing our efforts there.
“We soon learned that you can make a huge difference in just two days. ”
We teach them about teamwork, helping each other overcome their fears and obstacles in life. And that’s not what they normally learn down in their community. At camp, they learn all for one and one for all. They don’t hear a lot of that in their community. Everything we do up here is a metaphor for teamwork, family, community. And then we go back to visit their homes and schools, and do the same thing - reinforce what they learned at camp.
Ten years later Camp Ubuntu has grown quite a bit. We have twelve retreats up here with all the elementary schools from Watts. Then we go down to their community where these kids live and we have a six-week day camp in the summer to reinforce everything we teach at camp during the year. We are working on doing a Saturday camp, spring break and winter break camps. We also bring up two other middle schools and two high schools. That way we can track these kids from the elementary school days and see how our program is making a difference as they get older.
When we first started the program, my wife thought that it was a tease. You know, they come up here for 48 hours and then we send them back to those circumstances at the end of the weekend. But we learned soon that you can make a huge difference in just two days.
I've seen a lot of kids got off the bus with their arms crossed - they don't want to be here. And after 48 hours when it’s time to leave, they’re trying to sneak back in the cabins to stay. They don't get much of a break in the inner city. Life is stressful.
To know that there are these kids suffering and struggling every day and not do something about it - that’s unacceptable to me. That’s why Camp Ubuntu exists.
I love what our Camp Ubuntu family does here. Every weekend that we have a school retreat camp I feel like we won the Super Bowl. It's more gratifying than I could have ever imagined. It’s great for everybody involved. It's great for the teachers. It’s great for the parents. It’s great for our staff, and the kids from all communities. With the leadership and training program there are kids from Watts who are now best buddies with kids from Calabasas and Beverly Hills. They become part of the same camp family.
Just to show you an example. We Uber a couple of kids to and from school every day. Before we started doing that, they were failing their classes. And just giving him a ride to school each day, they now both had over 3.0 average. That shows you - that one element, just getting to school safely, keeps most of these kids from graduating. It’s unfair. The more you know, the more you have to help. If you don’t, you just feel trapped.
I regret time I wasted in doing things that just didn't matter. But I don’t really have any other regrets in life. I try to put a positive spin on everything. My first marriage didn't work out but I got two great kids from that. And so that’s the way I like to look at everything. Every meeting I ever had, I got something out of it.
That's the best thing I've learned - is to not be resentful and regret. Find the good in what you participate in and turn it into something better.
Helping others just feels right, you know. I always try to be that way. It’s not about getting credit. I have a tough time saying no to people. How do you say no to someone in need? I haven't figured out how yet. It makes life a little challenging at times. These people rely on me. You want to help them.
I mean, it just seems like the right thing to do.
