Day 173: Donna Reed
“… right now what I like to do is I love to connect with people … just reaching out to people and continuously working on getting our young people to where they can do and then realizing that the sky is the limit. Again, not only is it my greatest inspiration, but it just keeps me going on and on and on.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Donna, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Donna Reed: My name is Donna Reed. I’m the Director of Teach Boys and Girls Success — TBAGS — here in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Toni: Well thank you, and thank you for being here today. When you think about the word inspiration, Donna, who do you think you inspire, and how do you do that?
Donna: Well, I believe that I inspire most audiences that I come in contact with, but my heart’s desire is to really encourage and inspire youth. Young people today have so much potential, they have so much talent, they have so many skills, and I just love it when I’m able to pull that out of them.
Toni: So is that how you inspire youth, by pulling their strengths from them, their gifts from them? Is that what you do?
Donna: Yes. Our organization teaches and develops the skills and talent of youth and teaches them how to pull it out, and then how they can reach a level of success. And we have an entrepreneurial emphasis as to what we do – how they can just take what they do to that greatest potential, that level of success, with an entrepreneurial emphasis.
Toni: Can you give me just a little bit more detail on that, because that sounds pretty fascinating. Give us an example of how you might do that with someone?
Donna: Okay. When we first get in front of a group of kids and, you know, you have these young men, young ladies, and you say “What is it, you know, that you want to be when you get older; what is it you want to do?”
Most of our young men today, young guys today, will say “Oh, I want to be a football player” or something like that. And so a lot of people will say “Well, what is that chance of you being a football …” we say to them “I think that’s great.” The first thing I look at them, I say “I think that’s wonderful. Now, do you own a football?” And most of them do not even own a football, so I’ll say “Well, what we have to do is first of all get you a football so that can get out there and practice, because there is a lot of practice that goes into becoming that football player. Now, as a football player you have hours and hours of practice, but what is it, what else do you like to do because the career of a football player is only but so long, so what are you going to do as a backup plan when, you know, when your career is over, comes to an end or you retire?”
And then “Well, I don’t know, I don’t know.” And so then I start saying “Well, what is that you like to do?” And when they start saying “Well I only like to do this, I only like to do that,” they’re limiting themselves to “I only,” but we take what it is they say they like to do and then begin to develop that.
I’ll give you a really funny example. When we did a summer camp, we had the kids when they had a time where they’d go outside and, you know, the boys and the girls want to kind of get together and talk. We would grab those young men who said they wanted to be football players and say “No, no, no, this is not time for you to talk, you need to be getting over there throwing that football, because remember, you want to be a football player.” And so we would begin to really make them focus on “What is it I really want to do? And what is it can I really do?” And so we kind of, you know … and then we begin to develop that.
Toni: Now, what a fantastic way to inspire someone’s entrepreneurial spirit by just handing them a simple tool to being the process of understanding how it works. Have you then put in place other ways that you help youth explore their potential? I know handing them the football was a great vision and a great way to do that, but what other ways do you help them explore their own potential?
Donna: Well, we have a summer camp, and then we have an out-of-school program. Whenever there’s a day out of school, whenever there’s a week out of school, that’s when we get with the young people. And what we do is any opportunities that we see in the area where they can volunteer, any area that’s connected — what they like to do — we try to get them to those vehicles. If someone says that they want to be a poet, for example — we had several young girls who said they wanted to do poetry — so we would ask them “What is it that you’re going to do with your poetry?”
Almost all of them would say. “We’re going to put it in a book.” So we would say, “Well, who’s going to read the book?” And they said, “Well, we’re not sure.” “How are you going to get the book to them?” “Well, we’re not sure.”
So we would begin to take them to these areas, but then at the same time say “Where else can your poetry go?” And then we begin to show them, your poetry could be on a greeting card. It could be on a calendar. We begin to show them all the different avenues where their poetry could be.
Then I would ask the famous question “Any of you all know Beyonce?” And they’d all look “Oh, Miss Donna, you know we know Beyonce!” And I said “What do you think she’s singing? She’s singing someone’s poetry!” “Oh, Miss Donna, we didn’t look at it that way.”
And so then they would begin to see, because when we would start out, we’d ask them “Where does the poetry come from?” They’d say “Well, it’s my thoughts and how I’m feeling at the time.”
We’d let them know “Well, if you’re feeling that, someone else may be feeling that, just not know how to express it. So with you expressing it, we need to get it to them so that they can see someone else feels the same way they do. “
Then all of a sudden they’d see their poetry going from just something on paper to something where, you know, the sky is the limit. And so again, we just pull in what it is that they like to do, and any avenue, when I say, you know, volunteering. We’d take them to a festival and have them help set up the booths and that kind of thing so they could see what’s behind the scene, different avenues of selling products, or different avenues of, you know, creating the product, and so again, just utilizing everything. And if you would allow me one other example …
Toni: Sure.
Donna: One of the key things I start out the camp with when we have everyone in the room is I’ll pull out a tissue and I’ll hold it up and I’ll say “What is this?” And most of them will say it’s a Kleenex. Very few of them will say it’s a tissue – and then I’ll let them know, this is a tissue. Kleenex is actually the product name, but because they are so well known, everybody relates it to, you know, the name of what it is, a tissue. Same with Pampers. Same with, you know, other products.
Then I’ll say to them “How does this tissue get from it being made to you in the store?” And then they’ll realize there’s a packaging that’s involved. There’s manufacturers that are involved. There’s truck drivers that are involved. We will write down everything it takes for that one tissue that can’t be sold by itself, how it gets from it being made to the consumer.
And along the way I will ask them “Where do you see yourself in that process? Do you see yourself as the designer of the box? Do you see yourself as a salesperson? Where do you see yourself in the process of this tissue?” And begin to just open their minds up to say “Wow, anything, anything can be in my hands. I can do anything.”
Toni: That’s fantastic. You know, I wrote down the word sustainability. That’s what I’m hearing the greatest gift that you give the kids, because you provide them not just with the opportunity to dream, but you’re also providing them the way to think about the sustainability of that dream, and how it can help them, you know, throughout their whole life, not just at that one place, which is the beginning. That’s what I’m hearing you say.
Donna: Yes. We want them to see how they can take what it is they like to do, desire to do, just think about doing, and how they can take that and actually become anybody, anything they want to become. And a lot of what we do, we focus on family involvement as well. Our organization, TBAGS, started actually with an inspirational business with my four daughters, whose all names begin with “T”, and they started designing tote bags, so they called them TBAGS.
And what I did was focus on their individual gifts and talents, but at the same time developed this business, TBAGS, and so they all became, you know, confident young ladies. They became business oriented, community oriented. But each one of them right now, successful young ladies, all started with something that they like to do, but was headed towards something that they could do for life.
And so that’s exactly what we do, but the family involvement, the support of the family, knowing that they’re there, knowing that my creativity had to come somewhere down, you know, my family line and their creativity came, you know, somewhere down their family line. We like to involve the family because that is so lacking nowadays.
Toni: Oh, I can’t agree with you more. Donna, let me ask you – what do you need to be inspired, and what inspires you?
Donna: Oh, I think my greatest excitement and inspiration comes from when I see these kids hit a light bulb moment like “Wow, I can do that,” or when they begin to work in that direction and say “Wow, I came in here saying, you know, I wanted to be a football player, but actually ended up writing the business plan.”
Each one of the youth that came through our camp graduated with a business plan. That was the graduation criteria. We didn’t even hardly have to push it, except teach them how to do the business plan, but when I see those kids get so involved … and I want to share this because I think this is my greatest moment when we’re doing the camp or the program.
Each week we would take one person’s desire of what type of business they said they would want to do, and say, for instance, a restaurant — we had several kids that wanted to do restaurants. They were different types, but we would take the restaurant idea and then we would take our poets and we would sit them over in the corner and say “You all come up with a jingle for this restaurant.”
Then we would take the artists, because boy, I’ll tell you, our kids are so talented nowadays, so many of them can draw and just art, you know, artists … we would take the artists and put them in a corner and say “You all come up with the logo.”
Then we would take the person and the ones who wanted to do the restaurants and say “You all sit here and tell us what type of restaurant, what’s the theme, what’s the menu going to look like.” Then we would take our thinkers and set them in a corner and say “You all come up with where this restaurant will be successful, where do we strategically place it, what type of advertisement do we come up with,” and then we would start working among each other.
The thinkers would go to the ones drawing the logo and say “Look, this is what we’re thinking – you all draw a logo like that.” The next thing you know, within a day’s time, they would have put together just about the whole restaurant, and at the end of the day they would present the ideas, and they would sing the song, and they would show the logo, and that type of thing. And in a day’s time, they would see where they all worked together and helped one person realize their dream of a restaurant.
I mean, it would just be so phenomenal, I would have to sometimes hide the tears when I would just see these kids come together like this. And these are kids that walked in the door saying “Oh, I don’t want to be sitting in here all summer!” And by the end of that summer, they would have asked even if their friends could be a part of the program.
Toni: I love that! That is really fabulous! Oh my gosh, I hope you have pictures of all of this!
Donna: We do. We do. We have pictures of it. And I want to share this other thing, because I thought it’s just so important.
Our young people today don’t seem to read, don’t want to read, or you know, they say if you want to hide something from them, just put it in writing. But what we did and what we do is we have them read just about everything that they do. And they don’t realize that that’s our way of seeing their reading level, helping them with their reading level.
Our camp is based on basic life. I mean, just the basics of who you are and what’s needed in life. So we’ll take a basic, say cooking. “You know, come on in. You all come and cook dinner.” They would say “Well, Miss Donna, how do you do this? How do you do that?” We’d say “Read it. Go ahead and read the box.” Only if they didn’t understand what was being read, would we step in.
Other than that, every single morning when they came into the camp, they would have to grab from a stack of magazines. Go in and pull out somebody who would influence you in that magazine or would be in their lives. They would have to read about that person and then they would have to stand up. We would have five kids a day stand up and talk about that person and why they would influence you in their life.
Now they thought that we were just focused on their stance, how they presented, because we would talk, you know, we would say “Now wait a minute, now stand up straighter or look up when you’re talking,” but we were also focused mostly on if they understood what they read and how they pulled out from what they read to be able to present it.
And so, a lot of what we did, you know, we pulled into the background; they would never even realize what we were doing. And so that would also be something that would just really touch me, how we would, you know, go back to them and say “Now, did you understand what that word was, or did you just skip over it?” Because I know, I used to do the same thing. I’d skip over and I’d say “Well sooner or later I’ll understand what they were trying to say,” instead of going back and checking and seeing what that word was. And they’d say “Well, not really,” and I’d say “Well let’s just see what that word is saying, because that might have, you know, made a difference.” They again would be excited about something you normally couldn’t get them to do.
Toni: So really, your inspiration comes from the results and the progress, the creativity, and the connections that you’re making with these kids, not only what they’re doing but how you’re supporting that. That’s where your inspiration comes from.
Donna, the final question on the Project is, what will you do, and what do you do now, to continue to explore your own potential so this fantastic body of work can go on?
Donna: Well, right now what I like to do is I love to connect with people, and right now, as a result of us working with these young people, we are in the process of trying to open up an entrepreneurial school here in Charlotte, and just reaching out to people and continuously working on getting our young people to where they can do and then realizing that the sky is the limit. Again, not only is it my greatest inspiration, but it just keeps me going on and on and on.
I think again, just being a single parent, one of the other things I like to do is just to reach to these mothers. Because nowadays we have so many mothers that are so young that, because they didn’t get a chance to reach their greatest potential before they had children, they’ve kind of set aside or don’t see where they can, you know, reach their potential.
And I like to reach in and work with them as well. And when I see it all come together, that’s just … it’s like I’ve done what I know I’m supposed to do, and it keeps me going because there’s so many untapped sources. There’s so many untapped people and opportunities out there that it just keeps me going and going.
Toni: Well, Donna, I cannot thank you enough for being part of this Project. We will post a link at the bottom of the interview as far as how people can see your organization and also we will put it on the nonprofit side of the page. So those of you who are listening to Donna’s interview, please take a look at her organization as well. Thank you for sharing this wonderful work that you’re doing with us, and we wish you the best of success with this, Donna.
Donna: Thank you so much, and I appreciate this opportunity.
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For more information about Donna Reed: www.teachboysandgirlssuccess.org, tbagsdonna@aol.com
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“… right now what I like to do is I love to connect with people … just reaching out to people and continuously working on getting our young people to where they can do and then realizing that the sky is the limit. Again, not only is it my greatest inspiration, but it just keeps me going on and on and on.”
Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Donna, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Donna Reed: My name is Donna Reed. I’m the Director of Teach Boys and Girls Success — TBAGS — here in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Toni: Well thank you, and thank you for being here today. When you think about the word inspiration, Donna, who do you think you inspire, and how do you do that?
Donna: Well, I believe that I inspire most audiences that I come in contact with, but my heart’s desire is to really encourage and inspire youth. Young people today have so much potential, they have so much talent, they have so many skills, and I just love it when I’m able to pull that out of them.
Toni: So is that how you inspire youth, by pulling their strengths from them, their gifts from them? Is that what you do?
Donna: Yes. Our organization teaches and develops the skills and talent of youth and teaches them how to pull it out, and then how they can reach a level of success. And we have an entrepreneurial emphasis as to what we do – how they can just take what they do to that greatest potential, that level of success, with an entrepreneurial emphasis.
Toni: Can you give me just a little bit more detail on that, because that sounds pretty fascinating. Give us an example of how you might do that with someone?
Donna: Okay. When we first get in front of a group of kids and, you know, you have these young men, young ladies, and you say “What is it, you know, that you want to be when you get older; what is it you want to do?”
Most of our young men today, young guys today, will say “Oh, I want to be a football player” or something like that. And so a lot of people will say “Well, what is that chance of you being a football …” we say to them “I think that’s great.” The first thing I look at them, I say “I think that’s wonderful. Now, do you own a football?” And most of them do not even own a football, so I’ll say “Well, what we have to do is first of all get you a football so that can get out there and practice, because there is a lot of practice that goes into becoming that football player. Now, as a football player you have hours and hours of practice, but what is it, what else do you like to do because the career of a football player is only but so long, so what are you going to do as a backup plan when, you know, when your career is over, comes to an end or you retire?”
And then “Well, I don’t know, I don’t know.” And so then I start saying “Well, what is that you like to do?” And when they start saying “Well I only like to do this, I only like to do that,” they’re limiting themselves to “I only,” but we take what it is they say they like to do and then begin to develop that.
I’ll give you a really funny example. When we did a summer camp, we had the kids when they had a time where they’d go outside and, you know, the boys and the girls want to kind of get together and talk. We would grab those young men who said they wanted to be football players and say “No, no, no, this is not time for you to talk, you need to be getting over there throwing that football, because remember, you want to be a football player.” And so we would begin to really make them focus on “What is it I really want to do? And what is it can I really do?” And so we kind of, you know … and then we begin to develop that.
Toni: Now, what a fantastic way to inspire someone’s entrepreneurial spirit by just handing them a simple tool to being the process of understanding how it works. Have you then put in place other ways that you help youth explore their potential? I know handing them the football was a great vision and a great way to do that, but what other ways do you help them explore their own potential?
Donna: Well, we have a summer camp, and then we have an out-of-school program. Whenever there’s a day out of school, whenever there’s a week out of school, that’s when we get with the young people. And what we do is any opportunities that we see in the area where they can volunteer, any area that’s connected — what they like to do — we try to get them to those vehicles. If someone says that they want to be a poet, for example — we had several young girls who said they wanted to do poetry — so we would ask them “What is it that you’re going to do with your poetry?”
Almost all of them would say. “We’re going to put it in a book.” So we would say, “Well, who’s going to read the book?” And they said, “Well, we’re not sure.” “How are you going to get the book to them?” “Well, we’re not sure.”
So we would begin to take them to these areas, but then at the same time say “Where else can your poetry go?” And then we begin to show them, your poetry could be on a greeting card. It could be on a calendar. We begin to show them all the different avenues where their poetry could be.
Then I would ask the famous question “Any of you all know Beyonce?” And they’d all look “Oh, Miss Donna, you know we know Beyonce!” And I said “What do you think she’s singing? She’s singing someone’s poetry!” “Oh, Miss Donna, we didn’t look at it that way.”
And so then they would begin to see, because when we would start out, we’d ask them “Where does the poetry come from?” They’d say “Well, it’s my thoughts and how I’m feeling at the time.”
We’d let them know “Well, if you’re feeling that, someone else may be feeling that, just not know how to express it. So with you expressing it, we need to get it to them so that they can see someone else feels the same way they do. “
Then all of a sudden they’d see their poetry going from just something on paper to something where, you know, the sky is the limit. And so again, we just pull in what it is that they like to do, and any avenue, when I say, you know, volunteering. We’d take them to a festival and have them help set up the booths and that kind of thing so they could see what’s behind the scene, different avenues of selling products, or different avenues of, you know, creating the product, and so again, just utilizing everything. And if you would allow me one other example …
Toni: Sure.
Donna: One of the key things I start out the camp with when we have everyone in the room is I’ll pull out a tissue and I’ll hold it up and I’ll say “What is this?” And most of them will say it’s a Kleenex. Very few of them will say it’s a tissue – and then I’ll let them know, this is a tissue. Kleenex is actually the product name, but because they are so well known, everybody relates it to, you know, the name of what it is, a tissue. Same with Pampers. Same with, you know, other products.
Then I’ll say to them “How does this tissue get from it being made to you in the store?” And then they’ll realize there’s a packaging that’s involved. There’s manufacturers that are involved. There’s truck drivers that are involved. We will write down everything it takes for that one tissue that can’t be sold by itself, how it gets from it being made to the consumer.
And along the way I will ask them “Where do you see yourself in that process? Do you see yourself as the designer of the box? Do you see yourself as a salesperson? Where do you see yourself in the process of this tissue?” And begin to just open their minds up to say “Wow, anything, anything can be in my hands. I can do anything.”
Toni: That’s fantastic. You know, I wrote down the word sustainability. That’s what I’m hearing the greatest gift that you give the kids, because you provide them not just with the opportunity to dream, but you’re also providing them the way to think about the sustainability of that dream, and how it can help them, you know, throughout their whole life, not just at that one place, which is the beginning. That’s what I’m hearing you say.
Donna: Yes. We want them to see how they can take what it is they like to do, desire to do, just think about doing, and how they can take that and actually become anybody, anything they want to become. And a lot of what we do, we focus on family involvement as well. Our organization, TBAGS, started actually with an inspirational business with my four daughters, whose all names begin with “T”, and they started designing tote bags, so they called them TBAGS.
And what I did was focus on their individual gifts and talents, but at the same time developed this business, TBAGS, and so they all became, you know, confident young ladies. They became business oriented, community oriented. But each one of them right now, successful young ladies, all started with something that they like to do, but was headed towards something that they could do for life.
And so that’s exactly what we do, but the family involvement, the support of the family, knowing that they’re there, knowing that my creativity had to come somewhere down, you know, my family line and their creativity came, you know, somewhere down their family line. We like to involve the family because that is so lacking nowadays.
Toni: Oh, I can’t agree with you more. Donna, let me ask you – what do you need to be inspired, and what inspires you?
Donna: Oh, I think my greatest excitement and inspiration comes from when I see these kids hit a light bulb moment like “Wow, I can do that,” or when they begin to work in that direction and say “Wow, I came in here saying, you know, I wanted to be a football player, but actually ended up writing the business plan.”
Each one of the youth that came through our camp graduated with a business plan. That was the graduation criteria. We didn’t even hardly have to push it, except teach them how to do the business plan, but when I see those kids get so involved … and I want to share this because I think this is my greatest moment when we’re doing the camp or the program.
Each week we would take one person’s desire of what type of business they said they would want to do, and say, for instance, a restaurant — we had several kids that wanted to do restaurants. They were different types, but we would take the restaurant idea and then we would take our poets and we would sit them over in the corner and say “You all come up with a jingle for this restaurant.”
Then we would take the artists, because boy, I’ll tell you, our kids are so talented nowadays, so many of them can draw and just art, you know, artists … we would take the artists and put them in a corner and say “You all come up with the logo.”
Then we would take the person and the ones who wanted to do the restaurants and say “You all sit here and tell us what type of restaurant, what’s the theme, what’s the menu going to look like.” Then we would take our thinkers and set them in a corner and say “You all come up with where this restaurant will be successful, where do we strategically place it, what type of advertisement do we come up with,” and then we would start working among each other.
The thinkers would go to the ones drawing the logo and say “Look, this is what we’re thinking – you all draw a logo like that.” The next thing you know, within a day’s time, they would have put together just about the whole restaurant, and at the end of the day they would present the ideas, and they would sing the song, and they would show the logo, and that type of thing. And in a day’s time, they would see where they all worked together and helped one person realize their dream of a restaurant.
I mean, it would just be so phenomenal, I would have to sometimes hide the tears when I would just see these kids come together like this. And these are kids that walked in the door saying “Oh, I don’t want to be sitting in here all summer!” And by the end of that summer, they would have asked even if their friends could be a part of the program.
Toni: I love that! That is really fabulous! Oh my gosh, I hope you have pictures of all of this!
Donna: We do. We do. We have pictures of it. And I want to share this other thing, because I thought it’s just so important.
Our young people today don’t seem to read, don’t want to read, or you know, they say if you want to hide something from them, just put it in writing. But what we did and what we do is we have them read just about everything that they do. And they don’t realize that that’s our way of seeing their reading level, helping them with their reading level.
Our camp is based on basic life. I mean, just the basics of who you are and what’s needed in life. So we’ll take a basic, say cooking. “You know, come on in. You all come and cook dinner.” They would say “Well, Miss Donna, how do you do this? How do you do that?” We’d say “Read it. Go ahead and read the box.” Only if they didn’t understand what was being read, would we step in.
Other than that, every single morning when they came into the camp, they would have to grab from a stack of magazines. Go in and pull out somebody who would influence you in that magazine or would be in their lives. They would have to read about that person and then they would have to stand up. We would have five kids a day stand up and talk about that person and why they would influence you in their life.
Now they thought that we were just focused on their stance, how they presented, because we would talk, you know, we would say “Now wait a minute, now stand up straighter or look up when you’re talking,” but we were also focused mostly on if they understood what they read and how they pulled out from what they read to be able to present it.
And so, a lot of what we did, you know, we pulled into the background; they would never even realize what we were doing. And so that would also be something that would just really touch me, how we would, you know, go back to them and say “Now, did you understand what that word was, or did you just skip over it?” Because I know, I used to do the same thing. I’d skip over and I’d say “Well sooner or later I’ll understand what they were trying to say,” instead of going back and checking and seeing what that word was. And they’d say “Well, not really,” and I’d say “Well let’s just see what that word is saying, because that might have, you know, made a difference.” They again would be excited about something you normally couldn’t get them to do.
Toni: So really, your inspiration comes from the results and the progress, the creativity, and the connections that you’re making with these kids, not only what they’re doing but how you’re supporting that. That’s where your inspiration comes from.
Donna, the final question on the Project is, what will you do, and what do you do now, to continue to explore your own potential so this fantastic body of work can go on?
Donna: Well, right now what I like to do is I love to connect with people, and right now, as a result of us working with these young people, we are in the process of trying to open up an entrepreneurial school here in Charlotte, and just reaching out to people and continuously working on getting our young people to where they can do and then realizing that the sky is the limit. Again, not only is it my greatest inspiration, but it just keeps me going on and on and on.
I think again, just being a single parent, one of the other things I like to do is just to reach to these mothers. Because nowadays we have so many mothers that are so young that, because they didn’t get a chance to reach their greatest potential before they had children, they’ve kind of set aside or don’t see where they can, you know, reach their potential.
And I like to reach in and work with them as well. And when I see it all come together, that’s just … it’s like I’ve done what I know I’m supposed to do, and it keeps me going because there’s so many untapped sources. There’s so many untapped people and opportunities out there that it just keeps me going and going.
Toni: Well, Donna, I cannot thank you enough for being part of this Project. We will post a link at the bottom of the interview as far as how people can see your organization and also we will put it on the nonprofit side of the page. So those of you who are listening to Donna’s interview, please take a look at her organization as well. Thank you for sharing this wonderful work that you’re doing with us, and we wish you the best of success with this, Donna.
Donna: Thank you so much, and I appreciate this opportunity.
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