How One Of Obama’s Most Notable Acts For Trayvon Martin Lives On Ten Years Later

Roughly a decade ago, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech that for many would come to define his presidency. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” said Obama, in the wake of the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, adding, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

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But Obama didn’t stop at one speech.

Ten years ago today, Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper, a task force in Martin’s honor to address the “opportunity gap” for young Black men. Now, the initiative lives on as a part of the Obama Foundation working to support programs targeting young men of color across the United States.

“One thing I’ve come to appreciate over the last decade is that improving the lives of boys and young men of color is bigger than any one person or group of people,” said the former President. “It requires everybody – parents, neighbors, teachers, administrators, local governments, and everyone in between, all working together to make a difference. And I’m really proud that My Brother’s Keeper has grown a lot over the last ten years. Right now, over 100 communities are part of the MBK leadership network, and the impact has been pretty amazing.”

The Root spoke with Adren Wilson, Executive Director of the My Brother’s Keepers alliance, to get deeper insight into the program’s impact.

The program works by investing in local community organizers to support evidence-based practices for improving the lives of young men of color, explains Wilson. So far, the program supports 100 “MBK communities,” including four “model communities.”

“Model communities are [MBK] communities that are high performing, doing transformative work in one of our six milestones,” says Wilson; those milestones range from having elementary students read at grade level to reducing exposure to violence. Cities like Newark, New Jersey, which managed to reduce its homicide rate by 55 percent from 2013 to 2022, are among the model communities.

Wilson says results like Newark can’t be laid completely on My Brother’s Keeper, but they do work to help communities unlock their potential for change.

“At My Brother’s Keeper, we unleash the power of local communities to transform outcomes from cradle to career,” said Wilson.

But he says there’s still important work ahead.

“This really is, as we see it, the continuation of a movement of ten years,” says Wilson. “But now we’re moving even in a more focused way because we have the evidence of what works from the past ten years.”