Alumni

• Alumni Profiles (below) – Alumni from Possibility Projects across the country discuss how the program helped shape their lives as young adults.
• Featured Alumni Page – Read about former Possibility Project-ors who are doing cool things out in the world.

Alumni Profile: Jason Knox

“Usually after I’ve told someone about The Possibility Project, they ask me about what I learned. These people tend to expect very quantifiable responses, but a Possibility Project education isn’t exactly quantifiable. We were helped by the program in so many ways because what we learned were the fundamental skills that any young person growing up today now needs.

When I entered the program I already had a lot of Compassion, Vision, and Empathy, some said too much. You could say that I was “emotional”. What I lacked was Foresight, and Thought, Decisive Thinking and Planning, the ability to see the bigger picture – the things that lead to what I would call the feeling of empowerment.

Empowerment is a tricky concept. What do I mean when I say I lacked the feeling of empowerment? Honestly, I don’t know how to express it except by comparing myself at the beginning of the program and at the end.

At the beginning, I had a number of dreams. I wanted to act, and write films, and go to College in N.Y. When I graduated high school, I was 17, and I had been in The Possibility Project for a year. I had a 1.2 GPA. My mother was a single parent working two jobs. I wasn’t getting to college because we didn’t have the funds to send me, and I wasn’t getting accepted on account of my grades. The only thing I had I could really hang on to and be proud of was The Possibility Project. I knew what I had to do and I knew what I wanted to do, but I needed more time to take what I learned and use it.

In my 2nd year at The Possibility Project, I was on the Production Team. The Production Team is the youth leadership of the program. As a team member, I had to become a confidant, a mentor, and a leader through example. I was not only concerned with my own welfare but for the welfare of a cast. It was no longer about just me and my experiences; I had to look at the whole picture. People relied and counted on me. If I didn’t do my job right, people would be hurt. I was 17 years old when I got this responsibility. I had never before been in this type of position, and I won’t lie to you and say that I handled it flawlessly. I made many mistakes along with the rest of the Production Team, but what was so important was that the cast, and I, “got it” – we got that our unity as people was more important than our self-interest and that our self-interest was better served working with others. We got that race and gender and neighborhood and clothing styles and all of those meaningful divisions are not all that we are; that violence is the worst way to deal with anything; that resolving conflicts without violence is difficult and totally worth it every time; that standing up for what we believe in honestly is more satisfying than winning; that changing our lives and our cities and our world means we have to create a new way of seeing ourselves and each other; and that I could be a good friend and a proud person.

We came together, we successfully completed the first year and that meant we “got it” and had done our job right. When we finished that year, I felt that there was so much I could do. I had so much confidence in myself because I had, along with the rest of the Production Team, led the cast successfully through the program. Accomplishing that task gave me the confidence to do anything because working with a room full of very intelligent and emotionally charged teenagers is difficult for people with years of experience and training. I had had only one year in The Possibility Project.

I left City at Peace at 19. I started with dreams – by the end I had goals. The next year, I worked full time saving money. For two years I attended community college working up my GPA. If I didn’t have the grades or the money to go to college I was going to get them. I started at Frostburg State University at 20 and transferred out at 22 with a 3.63 GPA, ready to attend College in N.Y. Currently, I have finished my degree in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College and am working at a publishing house.

My story is just an example of what The Possibility Project does. Before I mentioned the fundamental skills that any teenager needs. I said how when I entered the program I possessed some of these skills but there were others I needed. Well it’s all of these skills that make the program so successful. Teaching these skills, Compassion, Empathy, Personal Responsibility and Accountability, Creativity, Leadership is how we take a room full of teenagers from the suburbs to the inner-city and everywhere in-between, from 20 or more different high schools and programs, from every possible background and forge them into a family. For me, that is what The Possibility Project is – a family beyond my own family that gave me a place to belong, the opportunity to figure myself out, the space to learn so much about other people, the motivation to make a difference, and the confidence to take my life and lead it.”

Alumni Profile: Karen Beckford

“In 2002, when I first moved from Jamaica to New York my life started going downhill. I went from a straight A student to wanting nothing for myself, cutting school, smoking and wanting to drop out. I started being promiscuous and it also played a major role in my life. I wanted to feel the love that everyone was talking about… the love that I couldn’t find, so I searched for it within a stranger’s arms because I was told ” I love you.” I was a 15 year old young lady with no sense of direction and nothing in life to be optimistic about.

In 2004 when I joined The Possibility Project, things started to make sense to me. At first it was bit scary – like I assume it was for most of my cast members because there I was in a room with about 70 kids that were strangers to me, that didn’t know anything about me but wanted to become my friends. Everyone was hugging greeting each other like it was a family reunion and I felt immediately welcomed. I knew I always wanted to sing, act and dance on stage but I wasn’t too interested in what was going on around me in the world. I felt like everything that happened was “the way it is” and that homophobia, racism and abuse were just a way of life. They were things that happened but no one spoke about. And I felt like if I did, then I wouldn’t be heard, because as a child I wasn’t allowed to leave a child’s place and take on an “adult role” which to me is becoming more aware about an issue and speaking about it.

During my first and second years in The Possibility Project I discovered skills that I never knew I had. For example, my leadership and writing skills. I started building meaningful relationships with my cast members and started to value my relationships with my family members. The first show I ever did was called “AlieNation.” Now, I am used to performing for people, but doing something with a purpose behind it was completely different from doing a Shakespeare play. It was real, it involved stories in my life that I wanted people to hear, stories that I wanted people to understand and to help me make a difference about. My cast members and I were talking to 500 or more people per night that listened to us and it felt great. By the end of my first year I slowly started to notice that my life was changing, especially in school. My new found friends discovered my feelings about school and wanted to help me graduate. I now stand as a High School graduate because of the support that I found at The Possibility Project. I was two years overdue but I did it, and I did it for myself and so my parents would be proud.

I can now say that I am proud of myself and even though it is unspoken I know my parents are too. My relationship with them is not 100% where I would want it to be but I feel the difference and everything takes time. Because of all that I have learned in The Possibility Project, and now practice with my parents, things are better. My mom told me one year ago for the first time that she loves me. I was shocked. It felt really good to hear those words from her. Words that I only imagined her saying. And that is how I know that if you can envision change it can happen – but it takes time and determination.

To everyone in The Possibility Project, I would like to say thank you. The Possibility Project has made such a big impact on my life by supporting me non-stop, listening and never giving up on me – and now I realize what they were talking about my first day of rehearsal when they told me “we are always here for you and we always will be”. The people of Possibility Project never stopped caring and listening. Now I have big plans for my future. I will be attending John Jay College to Major in Criminal Law and minor in theater – I plan to take over Paul’s job one day. (just kidding). I won’t give up and I know I have my past and present cast members along this journey with me. The Possibility Project ended for me, but I am confident that I have learned things that I can now take into the world and educate other people who didn’t get the chance to be part of an amazing program like The Possibility Project.”

Alumni Profile: Jessica LoMonaco

“When I first joined I was a freshman in high school and scrambling to figure out where I stood in this world or if I even had a place to stand here. Then, my future was fuzzy, I feared what tomorrow would be. Luckily, now I can say I wake up every morning and face it with hope and with the knowledge that change can and will happen. Although it took a very long time to actually understand, The Possibility Project is the reason I can. Looking back, I cannot help but see the hope that has grown in me. Hope for my generation, hope for my friends and hope for myself.

We started here in NY in 2001, a year when everything was falling apart and with our small cast, we bonded and learned to stand together rather than all falling down. From there, it was a learning process that could never fit into a textbook. The things I learned through The Possibility Project are all about human experience. It is seeing the injustice of the world and saying “that’s enough,” and learning how to do that together and how to create change, within ourselves and in the world around us. How to speak with one voice while still being a distinct individual.

I still consider myself lucky to know the people I have met through The Possibility Project. They were the people willing to give me the help and strength I needed to grow into who I am today. I will never take for granted the amount of support and love I have received, and how it has saved my life.

In the final show I performed in, R.I.P. Revolution In Progress, there was a line from a song that went “We must believe the world can change, but first we must start with us.” This line haunted me because I believed I had no chance to create change. I had just finally come to terms with having hope in the people around me, but not in myself. I could not see what was happening around me, I could not see the huge steps being taken by my friends to create change and the role I had been playing in it. Who were we to teach something we did not do? Who was I to believe in something I could not bring myself to do? And each time I got like this, the person next to me would grab my hand. Half of the time I did not know who it was and sometimes I doubt they ever looked up from their performance to see who it was that was sobbing and whose voice was cracking next to them. It was in those moments I knew I was not alone. I believed in my friends and because they believed in me I could believe in myself. It was their faith that gave me the confidence to stand up and take my destiny into my own hands.

Finally, after years of haziness I can be the strong person everyone wanted to see, the only thing is that my definition of “strong” has changed. While it means not buckling under pressure, it also means being sensitive, being compassionate and caring for people as much as you want them to care about you. It means being able to forgive but not forget what has been done to you. It means giving amnesty to people, and having the will to want to move on. It means having confidence, having the ability to cry, laugh and just be in this world, living and loving. I am proud to say that because of my definition, I have changed at least my family and some of my friends. If I did not have The Possibility Project to support me as I created this self-definition, I would have remained the same person I was.

Now at the young age of 21, looking back at that 13-year-old little girl I once was, it baffles me that I have managed to evolve into the “woman” I am. I have graduated high school, which no one really believed I would do and even managed to do it a year early. I graduated recently from college. I have been able to overcome the worst words to hear: “Get a new dream, you don’t have the look to act.” Well, since then I am proud to say I have been in 5 Off-Broadway shows with The Possibility Project , have worked on two films and on multiple other theater projects. I have grown and know how to be responsible for myself and support myself. But after all of this, it is the emotional things that matter, the things that we learn and survive together. It is what I was fortunate enough to live through in The Possibility Project that really counts.

It is surviving and being able to say to everyone that you never let someone tell you that you cannot achieve a dream and never doubt that someone else can achieve theirs. Know that you have love and support where you least expect it, and finally, just believe. Plain and simple: Believe.”