Photo by Michelle Mulimba
Freddie King works with students during Martin Luther King Day programming in January.
The Council for Youth Development is welcoming a new Youth Empowerment Program Coordinator to the staff.
Freddie King, who is from Bartholomew County, began his role on Jan. 25, and is focusing on working with CYD’s Youth Ambassadors.
Every year, 20 youth ambassadors in grades 10-12 are chosen for the program where they “serve through youth-driven outreach initiatives while strengthening their leadership skills and focusing on equity in their communities,” according to CYD’s website.
King will help create programming to help the ambassador’s independent living and relationship skills, among other things, he said.
The work the group does all year leads up to the Youth Empower Summit, held in April. During the full day of events, the ambassadors choose the theme, topics and keynote speakers. Last year the focus of the summit was mental health where they organized four seminars: “Adulting in 2023,” “Boundaries & Being Me,” “Diversity Speaks,” and “Successfully Failing.”
Another large component of his job will be outreach initiatives. He hopes to cast a wide net and encourage a diverse group of kids to join CYD.
“We want to make sure that we’re reaching those youth who are underrepresented at our programs, at our events and make sure that they have equal access to this service,” he said.
A 2009 Columbus East graduate, King has had a passion for helping kids for as long as he can remember.
“I think that I’ve always seen the importance of being a support to someone who really needs it. I also dealt with my own issues growing up in Columbus, with maybe not feeling supported at times, feeling otherized because I was one of the few Black kids in my school,” King said. “I know how it feels to be the only one in the room and not feel that support, so I wanted to make sure that other kids gain that support and never have to feel that way.”
King graduated from Ball State with a bachelor’s degree in psychology before beginning his career as a social worker at the Adult and Child Center in Indianapolis working with children in foster care. During that time he became concerned about the number of children who weren’t getting the support they needed.
“A lot of my kids in foster care specifically were falling through the cracks academically and they didn’t appear to have a lot of support or those advocating for them to really excel in school. So I began to kind of think, ‘Okay, how can I help be a part of this change?’”
He went back to school, starting graduate school at Indiana University in 2015. King was set on becoming a school psychologist. The program he took was three years long, including a one year internship. He choose to intern for Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia, where he was later offered a job. King worked in Virginia for six years and saw first hand the struggles students contend with at a young age.
“I learned that our kids lives are very complicated and there’s a lot of reasons why kids are struggling,” King said. “A lot of these kids are going through so much behind the scenes that, at the surface, we will never really see.”
Many of the children King worked with came from underserved communities in the grips of poverty and he wanted to be someone who could serve as an example.
“If you just have that one person that they can look up to, or be a support, or be that protective factor for them, you can make such a huge difference in their lives,” King said. “If we want to change the trajectory of what could happen to a more positive outcome, we have to find ways to engage them where they are.”
Then, with his nieces getting older and a yearning to be nearer his parents, King returned home in August of 2023.
King wasn’t expecting to stay in Columbus long, viewing at as a transitional period until he saw how much the city had changed since he left, he said. He pointed towards Columbus’ Mental Health Matters coalition and more conversations surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion as examples of that change.
“I was very intrigued and realized that maybe Columbus is ready for change now.”
He later met with CYD Director Sara Dunlap over coffee and was soon ready to join the organization.
“I started meeting with a lot of different partners and stakeholders, people that are involved in different organizations,” King said. “I started to meet with them and was very pleasantly surprised with some of the changes that are happening here in Columbus and wanted to be a part of the conversation. I wanted to be part of that change.”
