Darrell Smith graduated from Plant City High School in 1988, where he played football. He grew up with his brother in a single-parent household, “Not understanding what circumstances are — when you get older, you can see things through a different lens—seeing my mom struggle,” he said. “Football—sports has always been my outlet in which I could get away from the everyday and feel free. It really helped shape my way of thinking because it was so important to me. I didn’t want to do anything to mess up and not be able to participate. As I got older, I really got to understand how it could be a vehicle out….I wanted to be that person to really change the trajectory of my family…..to relieve that financial stress on my family.” Today his mother teaches at Burney Elementary School.
Smith took his athleticism to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, where he played strong safety, and majored in Public Administration. After college, he coached football at the University of West Alabama, and got a master’s degree in education from the school. He then moved to Orlando where he took on the role of Behavioral Specialist at Silver Star Behavioral School—a place where students are sent when their behavior removes them from their regular school. His experiences working with these young people taught him crucial things school systems don’t provide to young people, and led him to start the Young Gentlemen’s Academy (YGA) in Orlando in 2021. He brought the program to Plant City a year ago.
The mission of YGA is to provide educational opportunities for at-risk young men to cultivate essential life skills that will enable them to experience academic, social, and personal success to become positive members of their communities. The vision is to shape young men who positively transform their communities, and pave the way for a brighter future. YGA accomplishes this through group learning sessions and individual mentoring. “In this mentor group I am in, we do a lot of stuff with each other, we do a lot of bonding with each other….the brotherhood is forming and getting stronger,” eighth-grader Morrell Wilson said.
Since YGA works with at-risk youths, the organization teaches them how to change their behavior through strategies for self-regulation and conflict resolution. Along with this, YGA provides support to address mental health challenges, helps them develop coping strategies, and resilience to handle adversity. “I learned a lot of things in this group, like brotherhood and….‘Cut the fat.’” Noel Williams said. “That means get away from all the problems and isolate yourself from the people who do wrong. We call each other brothers—uplift your brothers. Help each other out and put each other on the right path, and put yourself on the right path.”
YGA’s focus on academic achievement offers tutoring and academic support services to those in the program. It’s leadership skills training takes the young men through experiences to show them how to lead with integrity, vision, good decision-making, and teamwork. Financial literacy sessions teach participants how to budget, save, and invest.
YGA engages the young men in its program in community service projects through volunteerism and civic participation, to help them develop a sense of belonging, empathy, and social responsibility. The program also helps the young men identify educational and career paths through assessments, site visits, and professional mentoring.
Young men can begin the YGA program as early as eighth grade. “By the time they graduate, they are going to have a plan that is going to be created for them to literally, walk them through high school until they walk across the stage at graduation, to walk into a career,” Smith said. “They follow the plan, and they have support from a mentor at these businesses. It reduces them not being successful. They can’t help but be successful.”
“You’ve just got to have folks who have that same mission in mind,” Smith commented. “A lot of these corporations look for ways to help the community, and it is a win/win for them as well. I want my organization to be a pipeline for them. When I meet some of these high school kids, they can go through my program and maybe get that one-on-one mentorship and that one-on-one access to these businesses that will make that transition easier. If I get them young enough, and I take them through the development of those soft skills, and introduce them to these different trades and businesses that I have a relationship with, that will make it easier for them to transition into these positions. They will be groomed. They will be seasoned. And they will be much better prepared for that transition.”
Smith’s plan is to grow YGA in Plant City. The first step in that is to find mentors in businesses and professions that can provided guidance to mentees. To learn more about the program and how to be involved, more information can be found at https://younggentlemenacademy.org.
“My goal is to try to gather up as much support as I can to demonstrate how, collectively, if we put our minds and our resources together, how much of a difference we can make in this community,” Smith said.