Homeboy Industries founder addresses neighborhoods conference
The founder of the world’s largest gang rehabilitation operation was in Palm Springs Thursday speaking at a convention focusing on fostering better communities.
“We belong to each other. That nobody should be left out ever,” Father Greg Boyle said.
That’s the message being spread at the annual Neighborhoods USA Conference where Father Boyle was the keynote speaker, sharing stories of former gang members in their own words.
“How can I heal the wounded if I can’t heal if I don’t welcome my own wounds?”
“People won’t rent to them. They by-in-large often can’t vote, and no one will hire them with their records,” Father Boyle said.
Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries the world’s largest gang rehab and intervention program, serving 15,000 people a year, 31 years running. It helps former gang members gain work experience and receive services with compassionate group support.
“It’s a community of tenderness and kinship and connection and exquisite mutuality that everybody belongs to each other,” he said.
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His work resonated with locals at the conference like senior pastor Rodney Croom of First Baptist Church in Palm Springs. He has worked in his neighborhood to help gang members get that sense of belonging.
“When they know how much you care, and they know that you have not given up on them. Then I think they will be willing to turn around and hear what you have to say,” Croom said.
Father Boyle says ultimately it’s all about creating better people and better communities.
“To know that they’re exactly what God had in mind when God made them…and it’s very heartening,” he said.
