[Saxophone begins playing] [Wilfredo Torriente] Hi, I'm Wil Torriente. Thank you for taking the time to look at my picture today. I would like to dedicate this to Miss Coriless Jones, who is no longer with us. Just a little about me: I'm a father, caregiver, community health worker, student, and a person who really loves the community. Loves serving the underserved and marginalized communities—the underdogs—because I was once an underdog. [Saxophone music fades] My name is Wilfredo Torriente. We’re here in West Baltimore at the Senator Troy Brailey / Easterwood Park. The park is a memorial dedicated to my grandfather, who was in the House of Delegates and then became the state senator in this district. They commissioned the park in his name because of the social advocacy work that he did. My grandfather hitchhiked from Lynchburg, South Carolina, to Baltimore. He started as a shoeshine boy, but eventually became a sleeping-car porter on the B&O railroad. He noticed that he wasn’t making the same income as the white sleeping car porters. A. Philip Randolph and my grandfather formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and fought for equal wages. A. Philip Randolph actually took my grandfather under his wing and showed him about activism, about equal rights, and how to challenge the system. I was born and raised on Lafayette Avenue in the South Bronx in New York. So, I got familiar with Baltimore. I actually had friends here that would look forward to me coming. Easterwood Park was like the neighborhood hangout, they played music, you played ping-pong, we shot pool, and we played basketball. It’s a shame because a lot of the rec centers in Baltimore are now closed, so the youth don’t have the option to congregate and play games at the community rec centers. That’s why I think a lot of youth are on the corner right now. There’s the Easterwood Park rec center, but it’s lightly staffed and not open every day. In the past, there were several centers all across the city where youth could go, and they would have support groups, mentoring, different rites of passage classes, and things of that nature. Funding and budget cuts closed them, and now the youth are left to pick their role models from the corner. The intersection of Baker and Bentalou, where my grandparents lived, was a predominantly upper middle-class neighborhood from the mid-70s to the 90s. When crack cocaine came to this neighborhood, the dynamics, the environment, the violence—everything changed. But at one time this was a flourishing, thriving neighborhood. As I grew up, I made different decisions and didn’t always follow a straight path. A lot of my friends that I went to high school with are dead or in jail for life. I actually fell asleep behind the wheel and hit a tree. I wasn’t using my seatbelt. I was on life support for six months and had to learn how to swallow again. I also had to learn how to walk again. In 2002, I got shot. Some guy was robbing some other people, and I just walked into it. He said, “Hey, gimme what you got, too.” He turned with the gun, and I tried to grab it. I got shot in my leg. Again, they said I wasn’t supposed to walk. I don’t have a femur there, just a titanium rod. Certain things happened, but I overcame those obstacles, those barriers. I thought maybe I’m meant to do something else. In 2016, I was introduced to a lady named Miss Coriless Jones—God bless her. She was the director of Dee’s Place on Wolfe Street, Dee's Place had 24-hour Narcotics Anonymous meetings, community support, job readiness. She had a community group called Historic East Baltimore Community Action Committee. They had a jobs bank and a workforce development program that helped with resume writing and interview skills. They would send you to internships, and if the company liked you, they would pay half your salary for 90 days. So, I went to an agency called Sisters Together and Reaching, STAR, in East Baltimore on Milton Avenue. I worked at STAR for five years. That was nine years ago. I’m 55 now, and I started a new career at 46. I didn’t know it was going to be a career; I just needed something to keep the wolves from the doors and have some money in my pocket. They had a community health worker training, so we were trained in the core competencies of being a CHW. STAR was the first place in the city to have CHWs. They’ve been doing that type of work for 30+ years, but they just weren’t called CHWs then. They were doing HIV testing, counseling, outreach, referrals to treatment, and everything. Reverend Debra Hickman is the CEO of STAR. She is dynamic, wonderful, passionate…I could go on and on. She is serious about the work and loves the community. She prepared me; she taught me; she motivated me. I owe a lot of where I am now to Reverend Hickman. Randi Woods was the director of the CHW training, and she talked to me about social determinants of health being like a tree with all this fruit on it. There’s drug abuse, rape, murder, different traumas. Then, there’s the roots, the underlying causes: poverty, homelessness, lack of transportation, food deserts. That was the first time the light really went on, and the way people acted made sense. The second profound thing she said was, “How are you showing up? How do you show up in your community?” I’ve always taken that with me. Even on days when I didn’t feel like going to work, or I didn’t want to go to work, I would still show up because I knew somebody needed the help. So, my line when I would meet a client was, “Give me 1% of your trust and I’ll work to earn the other 99%.” I’m real big on following up. If I’m gonna get you an application, I’m gonna help you fill it out. Then, we’re going to submit the application, and I’m gonna let you know where we’re at in the process. I was a CHW for about a year, then they moved me into a CHW supervisor role, supervising a team of ten CHWs from 2017-19. STAR really changed my life. I started learning about community-based care coordination, outreach, and how to meet people where they are. Reverend Hickman taught me to be at the table and to have a voice when decisions were being made about my community.