An African American History II class on the Alexandria campus recently had a special guest speaker, the co-founder and CEO Dr. Ayize Sabater of Mentors of Minorities in Education’s Total Learning Cis-Tem – also known as M.O.M.I.E’s TLC. Dr. Joseph Windham introduced Sabater, a former student of his at Morehouse College. Sabater spoke about how his non-profit organization is using progressive history to nurture at risk children of color and help them achieve positive educational outcomes in the District of Columbia.

Sabater was raised in Brooklyn, NY, referred to as “Crooklyn” or “Brooknam” by his childhood friends. In his day, a soldier was “more likely to survive Vietnam than a black man was to survive to adulthood in Brooklyn.”

Walking the fine line between a strict mother’s requirement of academic excellence and his peers’ standards of underachievement, Sabater was a solid B minus / C plus student. “In the hood it’s cool to be a fool,” he mused to a spellbound audience as he burst into a jovial, high-pitched laughter that was infectious. High school history teacher Dr. Garofalo made all the difference. She made history come alive for Sabater. Garofalo saw through the juggling act and believed in him.

In turn, a passion for history was born in Sabater. Garofalo encouraged him to look into Morehouse College in Atlanta. Morehouse, established in 1867, is the only black men’s college in the nation which promotes academic excellence and community service as its core values. Sabater followed through.

While attending Morehouse, Sabater hungered for the American dream and decided to become an entrepreneur. He chose business as his major until a professor of one of his classes informed him that there was more to life than making a lot of money. The professor posed a question to him, what did he really love? History, Sabater answered.

Sabater felt that he had a debt to pay to society because of all that his teachers had given him by investing in him as a human being. “Each one has to reach one,” Garofalo had told him back in high school. After reading Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro Sabater convictions only strengthened.

Before that Sabater argued with Dr. Becker, his Constitutional Law professor at Morehouse, that racism did not exist today. However, numbers do not lie. “How can 15% of the population occupy 50% of the prisons? Why is the number of incarcerated black men higher than the college enrollment of black men? Why is the unemployment rate of black men 20% while the total unemployment rate 10%? And in some areas of D.C. the unemployment rate is 75%.” With statistics like that it is clear that the political, social, educational and economic systems in this country are failing the African American male population, according to Sabater.

It was in his History classes that the individual stories of history’s heroes came alive in vivid color and where the early model for M.O.M.I.E’s TLC began to come together. In those History classes, Sabater studied the lives of Phyllis Wheatley, Booker T. Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Irene Sendler. They are the same figures that M.O.M.I.E’s clientele learn about today. “Great people have lived before you, great people are living right now, and you are great too,” Sabater says to them. Then he questions them as to what can they do about global warming, working with senior citizens, and other social issues.

The Children’s Black History Museum, a mobile interactive art exhibit showcases the work of the children, is an important component of M.O.M.I.E. Each year, the museum exhibits the work for one week at a fixed location. The museum attracts an estimated 500 patrons during its exhibit from Feb. The art exhibit includes the drawings of historical figures such as Robert Clemente, Abraham Lincoln, and Nina Simone.

M.O.M.I.E’s is raising money to purchase a vacant row house on Georgia Avenue across the street from Howard University. The goal is to renovate the structure from a 1500 square foot building into an eco-friendly 5800 square foot facility out of which M.O.M.I.E’s will operate and where the children’s artwork will be on display permanently.

Recently M.O.M.I.E’s children learned about Aung San Suu Kyi, the prime minister of Burma, who has been under house arrest 14 out of the past 20 years according to Newsweek Magazine. They were so moved that they decided to write to the Burmese Embassy to demand her release. They “are getting it…nurture the genius in children,” Dr. Sabater said to the NOVA students and went on to say, in the words of Gandhi, “It is up to each individual to be the change we hope will come to pass.”

You can learn more about M.O.M.I.E’s TLC online at www.momiestlc.com.

By: Annie Ryan

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