Based in Summerton, the Lost Angels Foundation’s founder Bryant Lawson has a heart for helping the youth of his home county to focus on a sound and positive outlook on life. This help is not limited to Summerton; his outreach program welcomes all of Clarendon County and beyond.
“I feel that our kids are lost and I want to be here to help and guide them,” Lawson said. “This world is filled with so much hate and crime and my aim is to make a difference. I have my own accounting and tax business in Summerton and a lot of the funding comes out of my own pocket.”
Lawson experienced a troubled youth, and in 2004 was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for selling drugs and guns. It was through his incarceration that he found his passion. He noticed that a lot of young people who were newly incarcerated constantly sought him for guidance and assistance.
He started to reach out to youth just entering the prison system by his mentorship and guidance to programs that would help to reduce their time.
He filled the remaining years of his prison sentence with seeking help for troubled youth. He guided them to vocational programs that filled their time with job training and classes to completed educational opportunities missed while incarcerated.
It was important to Lawson that they find a trade so that upon release, they would be equipped to find a job and lessen their chances of being repeat offenders.
“During my incarceration, the time I was serving helped me to relate to these kids,” Lawson said. “I was released in May 2012 and by June 2012 I started my Foundation. I wanted to find a way to keep at risk youth out of the predicament that I found myself in as a youth and that is why I created the Lost Angels Foundation.”
Lawson and his board members continually stress that their arms are open to all youth in all Clarendon County districts and beyond. He and his team want to build up their community where each child will have a place to go other than the streets. They want to plant a new seed and for children in the community to learn how to become leaders and to know that’s who they are, not followers.
During their programs and events, the foundation holds cookouts with music, games and other festivities. The children participating are also mentored to by members of the community made up from law enforcement, teachers, pastors and people who care and want to see a positive change. The foundation holds youth expos and other fundraising events to raise money for their programs and to collect donations for the underprivileged in the community.
LA Foundation created an afterschool program that opened its doors last year for the community’s youth and is based at the Taw Caw Community Outreach Center. The program is free to the public and caters to youth whose parents would otherwise not be able to afford afterschool care.
The afterschool program has a structured age appropriate tutor-based agenda inclusive of fun activities.
Members of the afterschool program donate their time after a full day at their regular jobs and consist of Mark Thames, Tashonda Felder, Detract Brown, Tyronia Bonaparte, LaTasha Henry, Dorothy Pleasant, Bryant Lason, Patricia Bowman-Smiling, Malcolm, Adrian Coard.
The GEMS kickoff event was a success last November, he said. Food was donated by vendors such as Bojangles, IGA of Manning and Piggly Wiggly of Manning.
The GEMS program was created by the foundation for girls of the community because they felt that a lot of the activity in the foundation were geared toward boys.
One of the groups focuses is engineering and why things work the way they do. They plan to incorporate the theme in the summer program featuring a summer engineering and coding camp at the community center.
Through her son’s participation on Lawson’s football team through the Clarendon Community Recreation Center, Latasha Henry, a biology, anatomy and physiology teacher at Lake Marion High School, soon joined the forces with Lawson as an active member and one of his board members.
“Every kid who comes to me and cannot afford to play on the recreation team, there is help; that is why I hold my fundraisers in the summer,” said Lawson. “Families in the community and board members kindly help us with donations for these causes and they are not always monetary donations. There are donations of drinks and snacks which help us to keep going. We are working on our own community center at the moment.There are days that I don’t know where the resources will come from for the things I want to do for my kids, but I start praying and God provides.”
Lawson said children who join the recreational teams through the foundation automatically become members.
“The incentive for beginning the afterschool program launched last year was because a lot of the players were having academic difficulties in school,” Lawson said. “The program was initially launched so that when football season ended, the summer vacation was used to raise the players’ scores academically. There are also members from outside the community.”
According to Lawson and Henry, outside participants drive from Columbia and Sumter to bring their children to the summer program. While still living in Columbia, Henry paid $400 per month for the summer program that her child participated in. Henry said that comparing the differences she did not see the results that she saw when her child participated in Lost Angels Foundation and the word soon spread.
“He picked the kids up, made them do their homework and made them complete their work accurately while tutoring them,” Henry said. “They were not permitted to do the fun stuff until the work was completed. Bryant encouraged me to stay and help and I soon became involved after I relocated to Summerton. His giving to kids in the community is totally selfless and he just wants to prepare kids for what’s next.”
The next item on the foundation’s agenda is a tutoring and vocational training program; one of his goals is to partner with some of the local businesses such as Pizza Hut, Piggly Wiggly and others so they may adopt a child through the program to do an internship.
Lawson said that he is planning to open his own community center so that children may walk to the center. He has his eyes on a building an old warehouse building on First Street in Summerton.
“The building has been abandoned for years and we are in the process of finding out who owns it,” Lawson said. “The building would mean a lot to our foundation and our cause, we could expand and create gymnastics programs.”
Football camp starts May 20 and is held every Saturday, extending through the duration of the school summer vacation. The cost is $20 per member but free to those who are unable to afford the membership; no child is turned away.
For more information, visit www.lawfoundation2014@gmail.wix.com/lostangels.
