Susan L. Taylor’s face and name are synonymous with Essence magazine. She joined it’s editorial staff as the beauty editor the year the magazine launched in 1970 and spent the next 37 years serving as editor-in-chief, publications director, and finally, editorial director, the position she held when she left the publication in January 2008.
But her departure in no way signaled the end of her work. Taylor had realized her passion for youth mentoring a few years prior to leaving Essence and founded Essence CARES in 2006. Essence CARES grew steadily into the National CARES Mentoring Movement and Taylor now runs it full time.
What prompted you to found the National CARES Mentoring Movement?
After Katrina, I just said that Essence couldn’t go back into New Orleans with the Essence Music Festival and conduct business as we had before. We really needed to focus on the children who had been displaced and were living in FEMA trailers. I just said we’ve got to get our community engaged in the recovery and forward movement of under-resourced children.
It was that burning desire to give an assignment to the tens of thousands of people who were coming to the Essence Music Festival so we wouldn’t just come and have a party. That’s when I launched Essence CARES. Even though I wasn’t editor-in-chief of [Essence] anymore, I still had Women Who Were Shaping the World, The Essence Music Festival, writing my editorial every month, and I just said, ‘You know what? You have more than enough. You owe the rest of your time and energy and life to your community.’ So I’m a bridge. I’m a bridge between the White House Justice Department, the powers that be, and our voices–to speak up for the children because no one else is listening. God has given me the grace of access because I don’t really need anything for myself right now.
Tell me about the annual leadership conference and mentoring summit coming up in October?
We have 56 [recruitment] circles around the country, and about 100 leaders came the first year. Then 200 came last year. And it’s a training so we bring them all together and we talk about how you talk to the media, why we’re doing this work. It’s motivating, it’s teaching them how to run their organizations, how to do 501c3s, how to incorporate and how you partner with the organization that you’re feeding mentors to. Because we’re not a mentoring program, we recruit mentors. Why? Because when the call goes out for mentors, the first respondents are white women and then white men and then black men. Black women are last.
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Do you have a hard time recruiting black men and women?
Oh, my God! This is more difficult than selling magazines, and selling magazines, as you know, is not easy! Our children have to become our first concern. They are not our future, they’re our now. And we’re not stepping up in ways that we need to. You know, every single faith-based institution and faith leader should be bringing their congregation to this mentoring movement. The crisis is more grave than you know.
What made me get up out of my seat at Essence and say, ‘I’m out of here’ was when I learned that 80% of black kids are reading below grade level. Fifty-six percent of black fourth graders are functionally illiterate. People don’t know that. That’s not what’s being spoken about from our pulpits, it’s not what our sororities and fraternities and our many organizations are talking about. Those facts have to be put before the community. We have to look in the mirror and say, ‘This is our responsibility’. We can’t rely on our beautiful white sisters and brothers to continue to take care of our children.
I’ve gone into prisons around the country because, as you know, incarcerated people read magazines. But who’s mentoring them? It’s rich white men; retired executives; white women; housewives who have the time, energy, and heart. [Black people] are overwhelmed. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we’re overwhelmed. And what happens is we reprioritize; we put down the overflowing platter, you know. Then there’s the television watching that we really don’t need that we use as a way to relax, and the mindless conversations that a lot of us are having that don’t lead anywhere.
We need to really focus on our health and well-being because when we are in balance, then we focus on the right things. Then we realize, ‘Oh my God, the kids around the corner from my church don’t have books.’ If the majority of poor children in underserved schools do not have textbooks, you know where they’re going? To jail. Into a for-profit system built on the backs of poor black boys and girls, young men and women, our children. And [National CARES Mentoring Movement] is saying hell no, not on our watch.
What’s your goal? How many recruits do you aim to get?
Oprah Winfrey did a whole show on the National CARES Mentoring Movement and she put out the number 1 million. So, yes, I’m saying let’s get 1 million mentors. She’s my number one funder, and Anheuser-Busch is a funder, and my husband and I seeded it. We put our own money into the foundation, so [1 million] is a good number. We need a million black people to really step up and say I’m going to mentor. One hour a week is all we’re asking for.
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What has been your greatest success with the foundation thus far?
I think the fact that 56 city leaders have stepped forward around the country and said, ‘I’m going to do this work’ and they’re all volunteers. National CARES Mentoring Movement has five paid employees. I don’t take a salary. But to have 56 people around this country in 56 cities that have said, ‘I’m going to do this work.’ They’re not being paid. And here’s what we do. We collect mentors–able, stable black people–and then we connect with them and get them to understand the crisis. We say, ‘Thank you for coming forward. Please don’t back away. Please stay with that young person you are matched with.’ And then we direct them to a mentoring or a youth support program, or a re-entry program that is in desperate need of black volunteers. That’s our work. We recruit, connect, and direct.
Is there an age cap for mentees?
You know, I thought we would cut it off at 19, but what we do is allow people to have their own ceilings. Because we have people in their 20s coming out of incarceration who have been incarcerated since they were teenagers. And through group mentoring we’re going into the prisons and we’re sitting in circles. I love the group mentoring model because it’s hard to get enough mentors to step forward. The fall of our young is faster than the governments, the congregations, and our ability to support them. The group mentoring model is in place when we come to church and it’s the pastor in the pulpit and 500 people right there. [The group model is], say, five of us go into a girls group home every Friday evening, and maybe there are 20 girls there and we mentor them. Then another week we go and, say, two of them can’t make it. Three of them are still there so it lends consistency.
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What do you want to see happen with the foundation in the future?
Growth. The acceleration of [developing] circles around the country. We need the infrastructure to support that. Anyone who wants to donate to the National CARES Mentoring Movement can go online and do so. We need to hire more staff to manage that. We have people from Nigeria, all throughout the Caribbean, the UK, Canada–they want to start movements. How do I say no? I’m just saying, ‘Hold one moment, please,’ you know, because we can’t manage it yet. So we have to really get this. I mean it’s up and running and going well, and it’s growing fast. But we need to raise more money before we can go international.
How do I become part of the CARES Mentoring Movement?
We don’t direct any mentors to organizations that don’t do background checks or give training. So if you were to go to, say, Agape, a mentoring program in Atlanta, or Big Brothers Big Sisters, or the U.S. Dream Academy–what we do is take a “fast facts†form. We get the days and times you are available, then give you a choice and say here are some of the opportunities in your community for mentoring. Then the organization gets in touch with you and brings you in and does a background check to show that they are not putting pedophiles before our children, and then you are trained. The training is about how you conduct yourself. You’re not a parent, we’re not asking you to buy clothing or spend a lot of money; just to impart values and motivation, and tell young people that they can, and be a voice of wisdom, and listen, because we’re always talking to young people but they need to be heard.