In a special one-time presentation, Odessa College presents Father Greg Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.
For more than three decades, this nonprofit organization has provided wrap-around services offering life skills, jobs and hope to thousands of former gang members and ex-felons in Los Angeles.
At 6 p.m. Nov 14 in the OC Sports Center, the college will host“Jobs Not Jails: The Teachings of Father Greg Boyle.”
Joining Father Boyle will be two “homeboys” who will share how Homeboy Industries changed their lives through education, counseling and job training. The event is free and open to the public. RSVP at the following link: tinyurl.com/4t9k8mmk
Father Boyle, a native Angeleno and Jesuit priest from 1986 to 1992, served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.
Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings, a news release said.
In 1988, they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.
