We are pleased to feature a Guest Article from Board Member Azim Khamisa. Azim is the Chairman, CEO & Founder of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF) and Founder and National Director of the Constant and Never Ending Improvement (CANEI) program; as well as a nationally-renowned author and speaker. Azim has served on the Board of Directors for Reclaiming Youth International since 2007. Azim's amazing life story places him in an unique position to speak on the topic of Restorative Justice!
IT IS TIME
BY: Azim Khamisa
It is time. With a society ready to shift to a foundation of innocence and peace, it is finally time for our society to shift from punitive justice and embrace restorative justice.
Restorative justice (RJ) calls for a shift in one’s mind and also in one’s heart. It requires that all parties involved in a “crime” or “transgression” have a similar investment in the long-term restoration of the victim, community and offender. In my own story, when a 14-year-old boy Tony shot and killed my son Tariq in a senseless act of violence, Tony is wholly responsible for his decision and his deed. But, as I have said, I believe there were victims at both ends of the gun. I believe the same is true for any perpetrator of a crime. The victim is the obvious hurt party. But the perpetrator is often also a victim. It could be that they suffered abuse in their lives—either physical or psychological. Maybe they are simply victims of confused thoughts caused by misperceptions, lack of education, and/or poor role models along the way.
Whatever the reasons for someone’s bad choices that end up hurting others, it is up to us as human beings to find compassion in our hearts for all people. It is up to us to promote the idea of having successful restorative justice programs flourish across our nation so that all parties involved in a crime have the opportunity to find healing and hope.
In 1995, I created the Tariq Khamisa Foundation with the desire to stop kids from killing kids. Our programs were developed to target youth from fourth to eighth grade. We want to teach them tools of nonviolence before they make the bad choice to join a gang or get involved with violence in some other way.
But even as we moved forward with TKF preventative programs, I also recognized that we were leaving out a lot of kids, the ones who had already committed crimes and were already in the punitive system. It was around that time that I met Mubarak Awad, the founder of the National Youth Advocate Program (NYAP), and Marvena Twigg, the president and CEO of NYAP. It was from our heartfelt conversations with each other that the seeds of CANEI were sown.
We developed a program for aggressive, defiant, and violent youth—a program which we named CANEI: Constant and Never Ending Improvement. The kids we’d be working with were the tough ones, the kids with attitude, hostility, and resistance. These were the kids who acted out their hurt, pain, and trauma, the ones who were headed for some serious trouble. Our commitment to improving the lives of troubled youths is constant and never ending. We will not give up on them. So long as they are in our program—that is, so long as they are not referred out of our programs because of a court decision—we are there to support them, challenge them, teach them, and love them. Some of these kids have never before experienced this kind of affirmation and commitment from an adult. This is exactly why we promise it to them. The kids in our program learn about trust through our interactions with them. Through that trust they also learn about taking responsibility for their own actions.
Constant and Never Ending Improvement. This is precisely what we offer and promise to our kids. We teach them that they have an internal navigation system. Tony was listening to an external navigation system when he shot Tariq. Antoine called out, “Bust him Bone,” and Tony, listening to something outside of himself and apart from his own better judgment, pulled the trigger.
With CANEI we’re trying to connect with the kids’ souls so they don’t have to rely on being controlled by what’s external to them. When you are in contact with your soul, you know what is right and what is wrong. It’s as if the decision of what to do is already made for you, inside yourself. I was inspired by three main concepts, which became the Three Pillars of CANEI:
1. Spirituality
2. Restorative Justice
3. Literacy
Spirituality. Our internal navigation system, our spirituality, or study of the soul, is different from religion and – in my opinion – is the best faculty we humans possess, since it is about our identity with soul. The soul is mightier and wiser than the mind and the heart. Once you are connected with your soul, you know it is wrong to steal, to lie, to be violent or to take a life of an innocent human being.
Restorative Justice. We work with the kids to (a) Take responsibility for their actions, (b) Ask forgiveness of the people they have hurt (c) Forgive themselves and (d) Redeem themselves by helping other kids not make the same mistakes. All CANEI kids are involved with Service Learning Projects in which they can give back in order to redeem themselves.
Literacy. We focus on reading, writing and arithmetic...and more. We help youth connect to an educational program that fits their needs. We also work on trying to instill in each youth a respect for education and a love of learning. All the kids' reading reinforces the spiritual or restorative pillars. We use inspirational media such as DVD segments with Tony, and movies such as “Gandhi” and “Schindler's List.” Writing is introspective and solution driven. We encourage them to explore lofty questions like: Who am I? What is my purpose? Why am I here? Those questions we all grapple with.
At core, with CANEI we show our kids how to survive using the brilliance of their own hearts. We lovingly impress upon them that we expect them to make the right choices and do the right thing. If they fail, if they lose their footing along the way and end up back on the slippery slope, we are there to pick them up, dust them off, and welcome them back with arms open wide. Constant and Never Ending Improvement. That is our commitment to youth in CANEI, and we won’t give up until they succeed.
Information on "The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit", and other books by Azim Khamisa, is available at www.reclaimingbooks.com.
