Teaching success instead of violence

Nzinga Oneferua-El, founder of the city’s Street Soldiers program, says about 80 percent of the students she works with know somebody who was murdered—typically a family member or close friend.

She’s no stranger to violence. In 1992, her fiancé, Al Stewart, founder of the WEAA radio station for Morgan State University, was killed by a 16-year-old and a 21-year-old, she said. Her best friend was murdered, also by young people, in 2006, she said.

“The day after the [1992] murder, I had a vision, and that vision showed me working with children,” Oneferua-El said. Since then, she’s helped young people break free of a culture of drugs and violence.

One of her goals is to have Street Soldiers and her Entrepreneurial Training University Community School spread from Heritage and Doris M. Johnson high schools throughout the entire city. The mayor’s office and City Schools CEO Andres Alonso support this, she said. 

Oneferua-El has the city thinking big: Counter to its media image, Baltimore can teach cities how to make their schools safer, she said. And Baltimore will host Street Soldiers’ second national Alive & Free Conference Oct. 17-18.

At Heritage High, the Street Soldiers “caused a drop in violent episodes in the ninth grade and an increase in attendance,” Oneferua-El said. “And that’s just working with them one day a week.”

Read the main story, Baltimore starts another school year preaching respect and alternatives to violence

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