Last summer, Darrius Snow got on a plane for the first time. Though his initial flight was exhilarating, it wasn’t as exciting as his reason for making the trip.
The Atlanta 19-year-old who grew up in the Bankhead Courts housing project was on his way to Ohio to meet actor Nick Cannon of Nickelodeon. The network invited Snow to talk about his work with kids who, like himself, grew up in Atlanta’s most disadvantaged areas.
But Snow had no idea that he was in for a surprise of life-changing proportions. After talking to the Nickelodeon cameras about his group, Bankhead Teens Encouraging Action by Motivating others (BTEAM), Snow was told by Cannon that he was one of four people chosen for the network’s first TeenNick Halo Award, to teens who have made positive changes in their communities. It came with a $10,000 grant for Snow’s projects, a $10,000 scholarship and a weekend with NBA star LeBron James.
“I used to be a Kobe (Bryant) fan, but now I’m behind LeBron,” said Snow with a laugh. “It was amazing meeting him. He’s like a tree; I was looking at his knees. We had a good time. His story is pretty similar; he also grew up in the projects and went through many things I went through. I went to at least six elementary schools because my family kept moving, and he did, too. And he doesn’t just play basketball; he gives back big time, and that’s what I want to do.”
Snow’s journey started in 2005 when he was a student at Douglass High and organized the BTEAM to get kids from Bankhead involved in constructive activities.
“I got tired of people picking on Bankhead,” he said. “They always thought of it as a bad place. I wanted to give it a new name. I got a group of peers together and we started organizing teams to keep the kids busy. We fund-raised for computers and field trips to the skating rink. We had a cookout for the whole community, did cleanups and took out trash for the elderly. I started a step team and coached a jump-rope team. The BTEAM was always there to volunteer or host an event.”
Snow’s work on BTEAM inspired him to apply for the three-year leadership program, Essential2Life, an organization that offers educational and mentoring programs to urban teens.
“E2L is more than a program; it’s a family,” said Snow. “They taught me how to run an organization and manage people; how to eat at the table; how to talk to people; and how to use [computer software]. They also taught me how to apply for college. I didn’t know anything about taking the SATs, ACTs or what it took to get into college. No one in my family had even graduated from high school. I had to learn on my own.”
It was through E2L that Snow came to the attention of the Nickelodeon awards committee.
“We cast a very large net,” said Marjorie Cohn, Nickelodeon’s executive vice president for original programming and development in New York. “We had hundreds on the original list, but Darrius stood out ... When he said, ‘It all depends on how you step and I stepped in the right direction,’ I thought, here’s a kid who’s an amazing human with an incredible heart.”
This fall, Snow left his family in the city’s Adamsville area to study business and mass communication at Voorhees College, a historically-black liberal arts school in South Carolina. And he immediately got involved.
“Voorhees is also in an urban area, so I started a BTEAM here,” he said. “I’m also setting up a step team, tutoring, cookouts and other things to get the community involved in the college, and a club that challenges students to lose weight. And since about 55 percent of the students here are the first generation of their families to attend college, I started another club to help them research internships and scholarships.”
Snow’s attention is now centered on organizing a community fund-raiser in Atlanta around a preview party of the Nickelodeon awards show.
“I want to invite a lot of people who helped out with the BTEAM and who are part of all the organizations that have helped me,” he said. “I want to thank people for helping me get to this point. We are here to play a role in life, and this is my chance to thank them for mine.”
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