Ellery Lundy is the founder and president of the Broken Men Foundation Youth Academy. Broken Men Foundation assists with boys who have had bad relationships in their lives. They strive to 1) give them the emotional support to overcome their past, 2) teach them basic life skills and life lessons, 3) empower them to be more productive citizens and leaders, and 4) provide them with a family of support. Here is what Ellery had to say about the program:

Why did you start the Broken Men Foundation?

I started the Broken Men Foundation because I knew that there was a need. I was in law enforcement for 25 years and I saw a lot of different families torn apart. Especially when fathers come in and sometimes mothers as well, and they had to be taken into custody or sentenced. When you look back and you see children are crying and people are hurting, walking out the courtroom hitting the door, and just because their life has been altered at this particular point. I said, what could I do at the end of my career to try to make a difference in the community.

The Broken Men Foundation operates in Richmond and Emporia, can you share some of the challenges and successes that you’ve had in your rural program?

Yes. The rural program in Emporia is totally different from being in Richmond. It’s difficult for young people and parents to actually get to us at times. The resources are nothing like being in Richmond, because everything is spread apart. We thought there definitely was a need to be in Emporia, so we did a pilot program for about 9 weeks. When it comes to funding and trying to get mentors to travel up and down the road, it’s about an hour to an hour fifteen minutes each way, and factoring in gas prices and paying people to come back and forth can create a challenge for our organization. So that was basically one of the challenges for our foundation.

How did you pick Emporia?

What happened was that we have a couple of mentors born in raised the Emporia area. My roots come from Emporia, as well. So when it was brought to me, it was a no-brainer. Once it was brought to my attention, I began to Google the statistics on violence that was going on in Emporia. It was at that point I noticed there was a lot of gun violence in Greenville and surrounding counties. I’m like, this is Emporia? You look for those areas like that to be a little bit safer or not as violent. Then I understood that, people think just because you are in Richmond or you live in the rural areas or the surrounding counties that it doesn’t exist. However, it does exist, so that’s what made us want to start a chapter in Emporia.

Can you speak to the influence that mentoring has had on your life?

The mentoring in my life, especially coming through high school and some college, were the people that I had around me. The impact of someone believing in you when others cast you away. As you are growing up and they say, don’t hang around him or don’t be running with him because he’s going to be a bad influence on your life, and then you turn out to be the one that was able to do some good things in life. Other people might have taken a different path, so the mentoring allowed me to know right from wrong, to be able to make the right decisions and understand that whatever you’re doing in this life, you want to make sure that you give back. What’s your legacy; to make no excuses, be accountable and make sure you listen. My mom has always told me to make sure that you listen when people are talking to you. Mentoring has definitely had a positive influence on my life. If you can be there for people, be there for people. If you don’t mean what you say, don’t say it because there’s accountability as you walk this journey of life. I’ve had some great influencers over my life.

How has being a mentor affected you?

It humbled me! It has given me a much greater appreciation for life. To understand all these young men and the mentors as we work together, because I could not do it without those guys, it allows us to create a brotherhood. What it does is, holds us accountable. It makes us very transparent and it also makes us have much more integrity because it keeps you aligned in our life. You’re telling all the other people not to do these things, and you have to make sure that you don’t do the things that you’re telling other people not to do. What has been the greatest part in mentoring has been to see a young man looking you in the face and to be willing to have an eagerness to want to hear what you are saying. A lot of these young men want structure and need structure, but sometimes don’t know how to receive it. It’s so gratifying to see. You know a lot of times when I talk to these young men and we talk to them weekly, it makes me emotional. My father wasn’t around with me growing up. He left when I was 3. So to be able to try to get this mentoring right, because there’s no handbook to living. It’s just understanding that your walk of life and life experiences will meet people in different places, if you allow them to. So I believe, it keeps me grounded and well rounded as a mentor.

Where do you see this program heading in the future?

I see us being the next best organization. I see the future of better fathers, better husbands, better brothers, and better community leaders. I see our organization being able to be at the forefront of being a footprint for a lot of people that would like to come behind us. You know a lot of times people will ask, how are you able to get these kids in there. First of all, I say, it’s God, and second of all, just us being transparent. It’s those old school ways into the new school ways that create some good ways. So our future, the way that we are set up, its endless! I can see these young men coming back eventually to help us with the program and then creating other chapters throughout the state related to our program. It’s just not about us being local here, but being everywhere. I believe that we are the next best foundation and I will speak that into existence of the direction that we are going in and our beliefs in everything that we stand for at the Broken Men Foundation Youth Academy.

Do you have any final messages you would like to end on?

Yes. I just wanna make sure that people are accountable for who they are and what they do. A lot of times we say, if I save one person you’ve done your job. I think that’s an old clichè. We don’t we don’t want to save just one person, we want to save many. If that was the case, it would be like if a certain restaurant only made one French fry. You know what I mean?  They would have sold a batch of  French fries and then said,” Okay, well, we served one person we’re done,” or if you went to college, they said, “Okay, we just educated one and we did that.” So it’s the same thing in life. If you have time to give back, if you have time to love on someone, make sure you ask yourself what your legacy is going to be. Were you willing to help someone today? My message is to love on people, not to hate on people. Make sure that you’re good at what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to put in the world.

You can get involved with the Broken Men Foundation!

If you are a part of a mentoring program that you would like to have featured in a future blog post by MENTOR Virginia, please contact Emma at pr@archive.mentorva.org.