Everybody at the Vassie D. Wright Memorial Branch Library in Jefferson Park knows Dynasty Taylor. On Monday afternoons she sits attentively, with a distinctive top-knotted hair bun, and oversees a group of about twenty local students in a tutoring program she designed.
Dynasty’s United Youth Association, a non-profit organization that tutors at-risk kids between the ages of five and 18, attempts to bridge a lack of resources Taylor noticed not only while growing up in South Los Angeles, but also while in graduate school for social work at the University of Southern California.
“With social work you have to take a statistics class and you’re analyzing data,” Taylor said. “I tried to see what resources in the community were available. And see what the community didn’t have… There were just not a lot of tutoring programs that were free for kids.”
Taylor said she discovered libraries in Jefferson Park and the surrounding areas have plenty of adult literacy programs, and little programming related to children. She called this realization “mind-boggling,” and admits that had she gained access to a program like D.U.Y.A. when she was younger, she might be better off than she is today.
“The schools in the area don’t prepare you like they could prepare you,” Taylor said. “I went through stages where I was struggling. I grew up in the hood – in what’s called ‘the jungles’ [Baldwin Village]… A lot of the kids are from around there. It’s a gang-impoverished community. Both of my parents are active gang members.”
D.U.Y.A. started at a library near Taylor’s hometown, the Baldwin Hills Branch Library on South La Brea Avenue, and three years later D.U.Y.A. operates at three more neighborhood libraries across South Los Angeles: the Jefferson Park Branch Library on Jefferson Avenue, the Mark Twain Branch Library on South Figueroa Street, and the Hyde Park Branch Library on West Florence Avenue.
“It exceeded my expectations. In the first three months, only 2 or 3 kids came. And now you can see there are over twenty kids here,” Taylor said as she gestured toward several light-wood tables filled with students. “The program just grew like crazy.”
Nebiyat Hamza, a mechanical engineering major at Cal State Los Angeles, became a D.U.Y.A. intern when she was sixteen. Now, she is the activities director for the program and works with high-school-aged students. She calls the work “addictive.”
“I’ve lived in this area for almost 18 years; I turn 18 in a month,” Hamza said. “Living in this area, I know some of the struggles that the youth have to go through. I have been through some of it…we want to make sure they stay on the right path. We don’t want them to go to a negative lifestyle and become gang members or gang affiliates. We don’t want them to do drugs. We want to make sure they go to school, get good grades, and become successful in the future. We care for them; we mentor them.”
Chianti Warrior, an intern who works with middle-school-aged students, echoed Taylor’s sentiment that D.U.Y.A. bridges a support gap that current institutions in the area are not necessarily able to offer.
“I wish there was a program like this when I was going through school,” Warrior said. “I went to a school not far from here. Growing up in this area… things are not the easiest. People aren’t willing to help you, people are telling you you can’t do stuff. There aren’t a lot of resources.”
Warrior said that being a mentor and role-model for her students is why she continues volunteering with D.U.Y.A. She hopes that she will serve as a positive influence for kids in her community.
And Taylor knows firsthand that those positive, mentor-student relationships that D.U.Y.A. creates are what will make her students upwardly mobile in society.
“The people who got me out of the situation I was in early in life were the teachers and the people around me: people who saw great things in me and told me I had the capabilities.” Taylor said. "That’s what we’re doing.”