Making Their Move

For Brookland Manor's Toga Boyz, A Mentor Offers Positive Potential For an Alternative Way of Life

On the street corners of their Northeast Washington neighborhood, the young men answer to mafioso nicknames and sport scars from being shot. Some have tears tattooed under their eyes.

These are the Toga Boyz, a group of young men who grew up in the Brookland Manor apartments. The name derives from Saratoga Avenue, which runs through a neighborhood that is at once a source of pride and despair. "Crooked," said one young man, but still home.

On a recent afternoon, a dozen of these brazen but boyish men in their teens and early 20s roamed from aisle to aisle of K&G Fashion Superstore in New Carrollton, laughing as they flipped through an expanse of suits, ties and belts. The $2,200 shopping spree, after six weeks of life-skills lessons, was intended to motivate young men often considered dangerous, apathetic and rowdy.

"I look like money, right?" said Travon "Franktasio" Celey, 18, as he slipped on a jacket.

But the euphoria was short-lived. Community activist William Shelton, who paid for the suits, heard his name over the loudspeaker. Eight Kenneth Cole watches were missing. Security cameras showed that some of his charges had stolen them -- a dispiriting reminder that while Shelton can take young men out of the Toga, wrenching the Toga out of them is far more difficult.

"You disrespected everything we are trying to do," Shelton scolded them a few days later in his office at Brookland Manor, where he is community relations coordinator. "At what point do you make a decision to do something positive with your life? You say you want jobs, but how can I send you out to jobs if I can't trust you? This is your life. You have to get rid of this get-over mentality."

It is a message preached daily by crusaders in the city's toughest neighborhoods: If you don't make better choices, you'll end up dead or behind bars. The message is sometimes heeded, sometimes ignored. But at community centers, schools and street corners across the city, mentors like Shelton are betting that individualized attention can make a big difference.

Most of the programs are aimed at disaffected young black men who are most likely to drop out of school, be unemployed or go to jail. They are either volunteer-supported or receive funding from city agencies, including schools, employment services and recreation, and juvenile justice. Many are tiny, draw from a single neighborhood and act as surrogate parents.

The 14 young men in Shelton's program, Young Men Making Moves, live in Brookland Manor or grew up there. Some are participating because they have court cases pending in the District or Maryland; others just want a job. All come from the Toga, as they call it. Many said they are not close friends and sometimes have internal conflicts, but they lean on each other when targeted by those who live elsewhere.

Young Men Making Moves aims to help them get a GED or high school diploma, a driver's license or learner's permit, and a bank account. To young men who typically dress in jeans and T-shirts, a suit is a symbol of exposure to a larger world. To the same end, they went to dinner at an Italian restaurant and took a trip to New York. But the biggest draw is that, ultimately, the program can help them land a temporary job that could become permanent.

When District officials talk about stopping or reducing crime and violence, they invariably point to dozens of neighborhood crews.

Toga Boyz is among them. The Toga's boundaries are those of Brookland Manor, a 16-acre complex of three-story brick apartment buildings off Rhode Island Avenue, between Brentwood Road and Montana Avenue. About 3,000 people live in the 535 apartments. There's a pool and a Boys and Girls Club. Tributes to the dead -- shrines of teddy bears and liquor bottles -- are markers of the community's darker side.