George Hodge in the late 1970s delivers air mail special against an opposing team.

County, Seat Pleasant Celebrate 25 Years Of Community Kinship Coalition Success Created By Dr. George Hodge

By Ian Harmon // Photography By CLM Films, Divine Design and Top Notch Photography

If you looked at a linear timeline of your life would you be able to pinpoint the exact moment it changed forever?

Dr. George Hodge can.

“I got a phone call from my mom, it stated that he had been shot and they found him laying in a pool of his own blood.”

Dr. George Hodge (at right) has been leading Hoops 4 Peace for 25 years. PHOTO: CLM FILM

That was the call Hodge received in 1994 regarding his nephew Marlon Norris. That news hit him especially hard as at that time George was interacting with youth every day working as a peer mediation specialist for Prince George’s County Public Schools. Under inconsolable grief amid unimaginable pain, George remembered the malice of that moment, “I had the audacity to say that I would never work with a kid again.”

Yet, here he is on a sunny summer day some 25 years later, surrounded by kids whose radiant smiles also light the sky bright as they smile because of George Hodge - a man who found a way to turn tragedy’s tears into the fuel that would force a community toward a better and brighter future.

Pushing through that period of agonizing anguish derived from the loss of a loved one, Hodge knew he had to do something to spark a change in his environment and help the hurting people - especially the adolescents - who shared those same Prince George’s County surroundings. Hodge, with the help of four close friends (Norma Thompson, Brian Shivers, Reginald Broddie and Carol Jones-Pinckney) founded the Community Kinship Coalition, an organization based on inspiring and educating at-risk youth in underserved areas through innovative workshops and intervention programs.

The CKC’s motto is People Empowering People Towards Positive Change.

And that notion, along with the determination to see that change happen, has propelled over 25 years of high-impact progress among neighborhood kids, their parents and the community. (click here for photo gallery)

Community Kinship Coalition Works: Changing Lives For The Better

Over the last 30years, Community Kinship Coalition (CKC) has serviced between 4,500-5,000 youth in Prince George’s County and surrounding areas. Many CKC participants have gone on to lead in many professional arenas including education, sports, politics, barbering, carpentry, engineering, technology, music and entertainment. Forty percent of CKC youth have attended college and universities including Bowie State University, Prince George’s Community College, University of Maryland, Loyola University Maryland, University of Texas and Coppin State.

Without grants or formal funding, but instead with the help of in-kind donations from local businesses who believe in his vision, Hodge has managed to succeed in spreading hope in spite of hurdles, “God put it in my heart to go to the CEO’s of companies, the mom-and-pop stores, the banks in our community and ask them for contributions towards what we are doing in terms of turning lives around. Outside of Kevin, we’ve never had any grant funding and it’s been a struggle – but, this year we have a CFO and treasurer and we’re going to start applying for grants because we are going to keep moving forward.”

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The “Kevin” whom Hodge speaks of is NBA League MVP Winner, NBA World Champion and two-time NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant. The Seat Pleasant, Md., native - whose image and memorabilia cover the walls and halls of the Seat Pleasant Center - serves as the prime and perfect example of the CKC’s success in fostering a positive influence upon those under its tutelage. Durant and his brother, Tony, played basketball at the Seat Pleasant Center and participated in CKC’s programs as young men. Durant has spoken of the program’s influence saying, “They were there for me first when I played back in the day. Each year, the organization has gotten better and better and has grown. I think it will work wonders for the kids seeing us here considering we came from the same background they did.”

And in 2013, Durant made the $50,000 contribution Hodge spoke of. The NBA star and U.S. Olympian gave to the foundation that helped him through his developmental years so that it could continue shepherding children along a better path through positive initiatives.

All Net, All The Time: Hoops 4 Peace

One longstanding initiative of the CKC has been its annual Hoops 4 Peace Anti-Violence Youth Summit, an event that brings together about 65 area kids to engage in enlightening workshops on topics such as conflict resolution, health and wellness, college prep and financial empowerment. Stemming from Hodge’s love for basketball (he was captain of the Junior Varsity and MVP in in 1975-1976 when he played for the Mustangs at Bladensburg High School) , he has used the sport to attract kids into the program and this event, but it’s the influence of optimism from the instructors around those kids - something Hodge himself experienced growing up - that has kept the children from dribbling out of bounds in life off the court.

“Being nurtured in this community center by positive role models, they passed the torch to us, it taught us how to not just be an athlete, but be a student athlete and also to be a positive role model. Learning those values and then having positive parents as well, it helped us propel forward.”

It’s at that event - the sunny summer day full of smiling kids August 10 - that one could see George Hodge fully entrenched in his element: gregariously embracing long-time friends, welcoming upwards of 450 total visitors with open arms and happily high-fiving kids like those he once vowed to never work with again due to his own torment of tragedy.

“This concept came to inception 25 years ago, it came out of the belly of pain,” Hodge said, “This whole community has come together over a tragedy, especially this village in Seat Pleasant. The community embraced what we were doing and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

Brian K. Shivers, who helped co-found CKC and serves as its director of Community Outreach, said of shared community and Coalition goals: “Reduce the violence as much as possible. Plant a seed that they’ll be able to make sound decisions in life. We want the children to take from the workshops and be able to use that knowledge in the future.”

Along with the workshops at Hoops 4 Peace, the children also participate in basketball drills, enjoy delicious food from local vendors, cheer along as they watch the 3-on-3 Celebrity Hoops Alumni Tournament and hear wise words of encouragement from speakers who care as much for the community around them and their future as Hodge does.

Wanda Knows Best

One of those speakers was Kevin Durant’s mother, Wanda Durant, who has been involved with the program for many years and has given motivational speeches to children who shoot and score now on the same court her son did years ago.

“You have a choice to make: do you want to reap rewards or consequences,” Wanda Durant asked the young audience. “The opportunity for you to succeed is yours. You have to decide what it is you want to do and begin to work at it. It’s not going to come as instant as Instagram. It’s going to come with hard work, commitment and dedication.”

Hodge: Leave A Legacy Of Success

With the speakers offering stirring words, posters of Kevin Durant gleaming above the backboards and Hodge circling around high-fiving, the children this day didn’t need to look far in any direction to find examples of that hard work, commitment and dedication Durant referenced. And after overcoming tragedy in order to help others avoid tragic situations, Hodge has seen his hard work pay off.

“You see the recycling process start,” he says. “Those kids who came through the program are coming back with their children, and it’s the same process - it’s simple: pass the torch. I think the most pressing issue facing our youth today is not having the opportunity to be exposed to positive role models and to show them that someone will accept them as they are, then empower them to move forward. If I leave nothing else, I’ve left an impression in their minds that anything is possible if they believe in themselves.”