Our Why…

In speaking with a Funeral Home Director in the Covington, Georgia area, he informed me of a startling statistic. He said that on average his funeral home receives the bodies of three (3) teenagers per week. That is mind boggling to me. These teenagers were the victims of a violent crime. Their young lives snuffed out before their prime, due to a senseless act of violence carried out by another teen. This is heartbreaking.

I have since found out that teen violence is not specific to the City of Covington. It’s happening in almost every community around our country. It’s a nationwide crisis. “The tragic reality is that too many young people are dying from preventable causes every day, including homicides, accidents and suicides. According to a study performed by the KIDS COUNT® Data Center, the overall teen death rate is on the rise, after decades of declining.” (Teen Death Rates in 2020)

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the teen death rate spiked sharply in 2020 nationwide, from 49 death per 100,000 teens in 2019 to 59 per 100,000 teens in 2020. This means that there were 12,278 teens lives lost in 2020 as compared to 10,258 in 2019.

While this loss of life is shocking, when you look closer at the leading cause of the rise it’s even more heartbreaking. The CDC reports that the major categories of teen deaths are unintentional injuries or accidents (e.g., car crashes), homicides and suicides. More specifically, the CDC reported that in 2020, firearms killed more teens ages 15 to 19 than did car accidents, which had been the specific leading cause of death for decades.

Though gun violence affects all teens, it is the teenage boy of color who is at greatest risk. A 2022 analysis by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions reported that young Black and Latino males, particularly young Black males, are disproportionately victims of gun homicides and that 52% of all deaths among Black teens in 2020 were due to firearms.

Too many of our young people are lost. All of this teen-on-teen crime just leads to more ruin lives and young lives lost. This causes more pain, suffering and heartbreak for the families which ultimately causes more chaos for our communities.

This eye-opening conversation with the Funeral Home Director and these devasting statistics on increased teen violence led me to start the Bria Janelle Foundation, Inc. The underlying driver behind everything we do at the BJ Foundation comes from my belief “that every young person deserves to grow old and to walk in their purpose.”

We founded the BJ Foundation in 2022 with the mission to bridge the gap between young people and their communities. Our goal is to build a stronger community through youth empowerment, community development, and strategic programming.

Our current focus is the City of Covington, Georgia. Our first event was to bring a Midnight Madness style community event to the Newton High School. It was a huge success with participation from NBA star Dwight Howard participating in a dunking contest with the students.

This event was to show the young people as well as the surrounding community that we can do fun things in a safe environment. “We put together a non-violent weekend where kids were able to come out and support each other instead of fighting each other. It was great fun!”

We followed up that event by partnering with a national EdTech company to offer $50,000 in-kind donation of scholarships for soft skills training for the students at Newton High School. We believe that improving a young person’s interpersonal skills and a growing awareness of emotional intelligence will ultimately result in a more emotionally mature individual that does not need to resort to violence to get their point across.

In addition, it has been proven that when kids have things to do in their community, where they can feel good about themselves, they are less likely to commit crimes, violent acts, or to shoot each other. But we need the community’s help to continue to make these things happen.

Through your generous contributions and proceeds, together we will help build stronger communities through more scholarship funds, community initiatives, back-to-school drives, tutoring, sneaker drives, and more.