Haskell with kids during a painting activity at the 2010 Black History Youth Experience held in St. Andrews Park.
As a young man growing up in South LA, Derek Haskell wasn’t a very good student. “I really wasn’t interested in high school, because I didn’t see the work as challenging. I was bored,” he says. “I got into a lot of trouble, but I was technically right, even though that didn’t fly with my mom.” He laughs as he remembers his high school days. But Haskell gets serious as he shares another memory. “I had a high school teacher tell me I’d be in jail two years out of school. I had a lot of ignorant teachers.”
It’s that type of negative attitude that Haskell believes is detrimental for young kids living in underserved communities. So he’s on a mission to “educate, motivate, and encourage today’s youth,” showing them they can have better lives and create positive change in their communities.
In 2006, after graduating from Atlanta’s Paine College with a degree in International Business Management, Haskell returned home to South LA to start his own media production company, Pressline Entertainment. He focused on media projects that uplifted the African American community.
“I wanted to show we could change our community through film. I felt as if the media only reflects the negative things, and I think people will strive to do what they see,” says Haskell. “So I started showing the positives.”
He started organizing youth activities with the Department of Recreation and Parks and got Northrop Grumman involved. Haskell says the aerospace company allows monthly youth activity projects to take place in their facilities, helping deliver essential youth programs no longer provided by Recreation and Parks due to city and state budget cuts.
“I enjoy helping people,” states Haskell. “I was raised in a home where there wasn’t a lot, but sharing was important.”
Haskell with kids at the 2011 Urban Youth Technology Fair.
While still in college, Haskell worked as a counselor at a Georgia juvenile corrections facility. That’s when he realized he could help make a difference back home. Now 31, the persuasive and engaging entrepreneur has big dreams for South LA’s youth. He wants to help them succeed in life.
“Growing up, my mom made it hard for me to hang out with the wrong crowd. Even though he had two jobs, my dad was always there, so I had a father figure at home. A lot of kids don’t have that,” he says. “That’s why it’s important to have programs that will keep kids off the streets and give them hope.”
Haskell is a busy bee. In addition to organizing and helping find ways to fund afterschool activities for inner city kids, he helps identify students to recruit for his alma mater, Paine College.
Through the Community Create Change Foundation (C3), a non-profit he founded in 2010, he launched the Youth Organizing Change Project, designed to expand young people’s understanding of how community action works; the One Nation Experience (O.N.E.) Digital project, focused on employing local youth to train the elderly on how to use the internet; and created the African American males in Medical Industry program, to give 13 to 21 year-old men a glimpse into the medical industry.
Haskell also coordinates youth fairs to expose kids to technology and science; something he thinks will help them land better jobs in the future. The next big event he’s organizing- the “Invention to Innovation, See Yourself-See the Future” Urban Youth Technology Fair 2012, is scheduled to take place on April 28 at St. Andrews Park. His objective is to introduce urban youth to aerospace science, eco and green issues, medicine, aquatic and marine sciences, automotive technologies and engineering disciplines, often not seen in their community.
“Each kid is unique and has to develop their own talents,” says Haskell. “And they need to see there are opportunities out there.”
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