Today we’d like to introduce you to LaDell Beamon.
Hi LaDell, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up in a single parent home in the inner city of Memphis, I was surrounded by love from my mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins. In the same environment there were the same challenges that plague many inner city kids like drugs, gangs, and a lack of opportunity for my socio-economic class. I ended up escaping the statistics of my neighborhood by being convinced by one of my best friends (Roman Hughes) to do whatever I could to get outside of my neighborhood to go to school. That something was picking up a clarinet in the 6th grade and using music as my passport out of the “hood”.
The creative arts impacted my life as I attended Colonial Middle School and Overton High School, my mind would be transformed daily coming back home and seeing friends of mine go to jail for drug dealing and gangbanging. A early start in martial arts also helped me find balance and a lot of love from my family inspired me. By the time I graduated high school and started touring with Creative Life Incorporated doing stage plays, I would be made the head of an after school program in the inner city. After building a strong relationship with those students, a kid that I got very close to was found murdered in South Memphis. Years before Heal the Hood Foundation became and official organization, Marvin Robinson’s death impacted my life for the rest of my life. I vowed to surrender the rest of my life to helping children escape what Marvin was asking me to help him escape. It would take me years to understand the formula that makes what we do now as Heal the Hood Foundation of Memphis a transformational groundswell in Memphis.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This has been a very challenging path. Imagine having far less than what you needed to run a not for profit that have reached over 550,000 children to date. Seeing children die in the streets while you had doors close in your face while begging people to help you save these babies. One of many of my most haunting moments was working for a not for profit being in the position of Youth Coordinator. We lost funding and the doors were shut to the children that needed it the most. I get a call and found out that one of the children that was almost out of his darkest situation that I had struggled with for years had been murdered. That story has so many layers. AJ was looking for me 2 weeks before he was murdered and my must painful thought is that if I could have had a place for him, the chances are, he would still be alive and helping me help others like him.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Heal the Hood Foundation of Memphis uses the arts and media science to enact change in Memphis and surrounding areas. Having a background in acting, choir directing, singing, playing instruments, being a career martial artist as well as a writer, I have found myself using those skills every day to bring the city hope and redirect the negative energy that exists in children’s lives. I specialize in producing hope through the arts. I believe what sets us apart is that God does things for us that just doesn’t make sense from a natural perspective. I still live in the inner city, no fancy car, huge houses or what I consider the typical spoils of life, but at the same time national legendary celebrities like Master P, Robert Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans, John P. Kee, Michael Jai White and Gillian White, the late Adolfo Shabbadoo Quinones and many others have come to Memphis to help us. We don’t have the wealth, but we do millions of dollars of service that organizations 10 times larger and with more resources can do. This is done with a heart for God and only 4 full time staff members, volunteers and a few super talented contracted instructors. It is the grace of God that makes this possible.
What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is pouring out everything I have to those that have lost hope. Children are who they are because of the adults that have built the world around them. I find myself while we are touring with our Wake Up Tour of Hope assembly program, apologizing in the middle of our presentation to all the children in the gym or auditorium for what the adults in their lives and running the country have done to them. We spend so much time building for kids to become adults in the future until we forget about them being a child in the moment. That has been a tragedy for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hthmemphis.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthehood/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealTheHoodFoundation/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ladell-beamon-1264372b/
- Twitter: https://x.com/HealTheHood_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hthworldwidemusicgroup3104
- Other: https://store.bookbaby.com/profile/ladellbeamon
