EP 09 — FOR REAL · MADE HERE
Anthony Redd
Runs the nonprofit that feeds and tutors kids on the north side
SAMPLE PROFILE — FILM SLOT
His story is coming to the series soon.
Two Blocks From the Park
Anthony Redd grew up two blocks from Douglass Park, back when everybody's mother could holler your name off a porch and you came. He wasn't a bad kid. He was a bored one, and in the early nineties bored got dangerous.
He was twenty when his best friend was killed over something so small he still won't say what it was. He carried that for years. Some of it he's still carrying.
I've buried friends who were smarter than me. Talent was never our problem out here.
The Center
He worked a decade of regular jobs, a loading dock, a school custodian gig, and coached park district ball on the side because it kept him near kids. At thirty-five he filed the paperwork for a nonprofit with $600 and a borrowed printer.
Seventeen years later his organization runs tutoring, a food pantry, and summer programs out of a gym on the north side. He knows his numbers cold, the meals served, the report cards pulled up.
But he measures it in funerals he hasn't had to attend.