Monday, August 22, 2016

McDonalds Group Members Talk About Their Commitment to the Group’s Scholarship Award

By VINCE BRYANT, Mentoring & Partnership for Youth Development Program Coordinator

Front row: DaShon Pulley, John Pointer, Isaiah Irby, Michael Hawkins, D'Mario Lundy, McDonalds Manager Valessa Gallegos. Back row: William Greer, O.T. Triplett, George Jenkins, Lloyd Graves, Tecumseh Shackelford, Ernest Johnson, and Ben Davis. Contributors not photographed: Velton Paggett, Councilman Tyron Hampton Jr, and Bill Bradley

The McDonalds group is a group of men that meet every morning at McDonald’s on Lincoln Ave. and Woodbury Rd. in Altadena. Their meetings usually consist of current events and other popular community topics. These topics were all just to invoke thought and conversation until the topic of scholarship money for the young men in our community came up. After their discussion, realizing that our young men needed immediate help, the group decided to take action. So, five years ago they decided to start the McDonalds Men’s Group Scholarship Award. This award has served many young men over this period and continues to do so.

This year, five young men were selected from John Muir High School. These students include DaShon Pulley, D’Mario Lundy, John Pointer, Michael Hawkins and Isaiah Irby which were all very deserving of the award and highly appreciative of the assistance to go on and do great things in their lives.

I took the opportunity to visit the McDonalds Group one morning and ask some of the men what made them so adamant about getting involved with this scholarship.

“I got involved because of the idea to help encourage the young men in our community to further their education was brilliant to me. It’s also great to see these same young men come back and help our community,” said Ernest Johnson a longtime community member.

Another member of the group, O. T. Triplett stated “I can’t think of a better scholarship to be a part of. It’s a great opportunity to get the young men to better themselves. I know it isn’t enough to get completely get them through college but anyway we can help is important to the community.”

It’s a great thing to not only see these men giving back to their community but for them to also be so excited about it is simply amazing. These are the types of that we need to uplift the youth in our community.