(Pictured left to right) Darryl and Robin Sturdivant of TeamUp Connections are pictured with Mitchell Huntly
Lauren Monica | Anson Record
ANSON COUNTY — Former Pastor, school board member and mayoral candidate Mitchell Huntley is partnering up with Darryl and Robin Sturdivant of TeamUp Connections to reach at-risk youth in Anson County.
“We mentor at-risk kids in Charlotte, kids that are involved in high risk crime, shootings and carjackings and things like that. We mentor kids who are assigned a court case or court counselor. We have about 50 at-risk kids that we mentor, boys and girls,” explained Darryl Sturdivant, a former police officer in Mecklenburg.
During his 30-year law enforcement career, Sturdivant was a D.A.R.E officer who spent a lot of time mentoring the kids he came in contact with in the schools. A Wadesboro native, he attended Bowman High before joining the military.
“What we want to do is bring Team Up Connections to Anson County. We are trying to get Mitch [Huntly] started here because we just want to help the people out and we want the people of Anson County to get behind Mitchell Huntley and help with the juvenile crime down here.” TeamUp Connections is a 52-week program that helps reduce recidivism in the community. The Sturdivants say of the kids who have completed their program, little to none have gone on to be repeat offenders.
The organization is Mecklenburg based and the Sturdivants say they provide a strong organization, strong people and a place kids can come to get help with different situations they are dealing with in their life.
“We try to provide everything from A to Z for these kids, whether it be emotionally, socially, any information and resources. Just because a kid makes one or two bad decisions in life, we always say, it doesn’t define that person. We try to give them a whole new outlook on life and change their heart. We are one of the top mentoring programs in North Carolina, if not the top,” says Darryl Sturdivant.
“We are hoping Anson County will come alongside Mitchell [Huntly] in Wadesboro. It is really needed in this county. I have heard some staggering news about Anson that I was not prepared for,” says Darryl Sturdivant. Their roots deep in the community, the Sturdivants lost a nephew about two years ago in Wadesboro to crime. “We want to see the county as a whole get involved, the leaders… there could be a major change in Anson in just six months. To get this thing rolling, we gotta start somewhere,” he said.
Born in Los Angeles, Robin Sturdivant grew up in Mecklenburg and saw first hand the need in the community to reach the youth. After her husband retired from law enforcement and was still getting calls from teachers, principals, and the superintendent of schools requesting that he mentor students labeled “at-risk,” Robin Sturdivant told her husband, “It’s time to start a mentor-ship program.”
At first, the couple funded the program themselves, but now TeamUp Connections is in its fifth year of being funded and supported by the state. When it comes to mentoring, Robin Sturdivant said she believes the community has to change its mindset about what is predicted from a child labeled at-risk.
“A lot of times they need to have the space and environment to know that they can change. We have to put kids in front of opportunities, give them a picture of what a better way forward looks like so they can make decisions about the direction their life is going to go in. We can’t just tell a kid what to do, we have to give them examples of what change looks like, take their hand and guide them, or they will never learn,” says Robin Sturdivant, who also spearheads a girl’s club called She Shall Rise, which is committed to “Speaking life into the destiny of our young girls’ journey through life.”
She said she often finds kids are dealing with dramas that they didn’t create and lack the emotional maturity to manage and properly express their emotions.
“They go through life thinking their behaviors are normal because to them it is normal behavior. We show them how to deal with their emotions by providing them with a safe space for structure and guidance. This is why we take kids out of their element and bring them to ours,” said Robin.
The program focuses on the family unit, even sitting down and mentoring parents.
“We tell kids they are all the same person over and over again but they have individual gifts and talents. We help them to understand they are different from the next person, that God created you to be different. He gives us gifts and talents and we believe in putting opportunities in front of them so they can nourish that. We believe the kids that come to us have been divinely appointed to receive a new beginning,” says Robin. “We address the four domains; social, emotional, academic, and peer relations. The kids come up with an action plan of how to stay grounded in those four domains and we reward them at the end of each quarter that they stay on track,” she explained.
Through the program, the Sturdivants take the kids on trips, such as most recently,on a tour of Camp LeJeune.
Mitchell Huntley said he is excited about bringing the program to Anson County because he truly believes it could turn the tide in the county’s youth.
“We have lost patience and compassion with our own. I have a heart for Christ and our youth,” said Huntley, a former pastor who is already involved with mentoring youth in Anson. “We have so many emotional males and their normal is all dysfunctional.”
Huntley said he believes the county is 25 years behind in resources and education.
“We have pushed our kids back. We don’t even have a rec center here… It is the city’s responsibility to provide a place for kids to play, a safe place for them to just get out of the house for a while. I had that growing up here and all of that has been taken from us,” said Huntley, who added he believes Anson has been a pipeline for the prison system, churning out young adults who are not educated.
“We have three prisons and one high school. When kids are uneducated and there is dysfunction in the family, they resort to a life of crime, drugs and sex… Our kids are illiterate and this is the truth about Anson County. We don’t have jobs here,” said Huntley. “I’ve known men who come Christmas time break the law to buy gifts for their kids. That is our reality here. We are our only opposition in Anson and we are our only opportunity to change it.”
Huntley points out there are 120 churches in Anson County and if he could just get one male and one female from 60 of them to volunteer, he could have 120 mentors making a change in the community.
“That is 120 people that can be mentoring in this program. We want people to come to church but the church isn’t coming to them. Here we are professing the love of Christ but not doing the work of Christ. Through the internet we are exposing kids to too much information too early and they are losing their childhood, their innocence. This is our responsibility and we have failed our youth. There is no pointing fingers at anybody else.”
Huntly said he feels as though his life experiences growing up in Anson County has prepared him for this role.
“We are more silent here in Anson, we don’t like to talk about it. I was one of those at-risk kids raised by surrogates and older ladies in the community and I had a lot of resentment. But people are not like they were when I was growing up, they loved on you like you were their own. Older guys tell me they can’t do anything but I tell them you are the ones to show the way. Y’all are our libraries, you have stories to tell these young folks that don’t know what we have been through. I spent a week in jail and went right back to the streets because the streets welcomed me. That was my family. Now is my opportunity to give back and share my life experiences because I understand where they are sitting at. I am mirroring myself in this,” he said.
To learn more, make donations, or get involved, visit www.teamupconnections.org.
Mitchell Huntley can be reached at 704-322-9828.
