Grown from modest beginnings in a local barbershop, a simple school backpack giveaway has blossomed into the blockbuster Gotcha’ Back School Kickoff event for Fayetteville families.
This summer, 400 students from kindergarten through high school will receive a backpack stuffed with items they need to start school on the right foot.
In most communities, the neighborhood barbershop serves up more than a shave and a haircut. It often doubles as a town square, a friendly hangout, and a place where the locals, from politicians to preachers, business executives to blue-collar laborers, grandpas, and little boys can go to freshen up their look and enjoy good conversation.
Sometimes magic happens.
Seventeen years ago, Kevin Brooks, now 54, was a young father and the owner of Trimmerz, the barbershop in Bronco Square on Murchison Road. He remembers commiserating with his fellow barbers and customers over the challenges inherent in stocking his kids’ backpacks for school.
A backpack might seem like a simple thing, but for thousands of children in Cumberland County, it is a necessity that some families can’t afford. And filling them with school supplies is just one more hurdle to overcome.
“At the time, I had one kid in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school,” Kevin said. “The back-to-school lists were different for the different educational levels, so my wife and I divided up the shopping, yet we still came up short.”
It took several days of shopping at different stores for Kevin and his wife Gloria to buy the supplies their kids needed to get their school year off to a good start.
“At the barbershop, we realized a single mom or single dad in this situation with three kids would be under a lot of stress having to buy for all of them,” Kevin said. “So, we challenged our clients and each other to help families stock up on back-to-school supplies.”
Operating out of Trimmerz that first summer in 2007, the group gave away 100 backpacks, he said.
It was a simple idea that took off like a rocket, quickly outgrowing the barbershop and Bronco Square and evolving into an annual summertime backpack giveaway and festival. The event has moved around Fayetteville to Festival Park, Fayetteville State University, the Fuller Recreation Center, and Crown Coliseum, Kevin said.
This year, the annual Gotcha’ Back School Kickoff takes place at 11 a.m. Aug. 17 at True Vine Ministries. The event features community service programs, a job fair, voter education activities, music, vendors, and food.
Kevin started barbering as a young kid. He never considered making it his career, but it fit his personality and gave him a sense of purpose.
“At Trimmerz, I was able to interact with the community, and we welcomed everyone who walked through the door,” he said. “Inside, our customers could interact, learn what’s going on in town, and leave a little different, even if that just meant getting a new haircut.”
Kevin said he’s always been drawn to community service and advocacy for those he says are doing hard, important work — particularly teachers. It seemed fitting to use his barber shop as a platform to help elevate the community and inspire participation from local residents.
“When we started giving away the backpacks, people just kept coming,” he said. “They told us we needed to grow the program, and we became more event-driven.”
Over time, Trimmerz added other programs to its backpack giveaway, including a youth leadership event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a summer success initiative that paid tuition for kids to go to various local summer camps.
He also launched The Group Theory in 2016, a nonprofit devoted to supporting at-risk youths, ages 12 to 18, and added the Gotcha’ Back School Kickoff to its menu of programs.
“The barbershop started doubling as everything,” Kevin said.
When Covid-19 shut everything down, Trimmerz, like other businesses in Fayetteville and beyond, was stopped in its tracks. For Kevin, it was an eye-opening experience and gave him a moment of reckoning. At the age of 50, he took stock.
“It was the first time I had ever stopped cutting hair for that long,” he said. “I had been having some leg and foot problems, and all this caused me to consider what the rest of my career might look like.”
He launched Build Your Self, a community violence intervention program, using his pandemic downtime to start creating its curriculum. Today, the program is in its fourth year and is offered through The Group Theory.
In 2021, Kevin sold Trimmerz, retired from barbering and began running The Group Theory full time.
Building key partnerships has been key to his success.
“While we are a small organization, we stay very busy,” he said. “Our theme is ‘common unity,’ and our goal is to decrease the gaps between the need for assistance and access to it.”
One of his service partners is Christen Miller, 36, a mental health professional and former bank employee who founded F.E.L.P. (Future Endeavors Life Program) in 2014 as a youth development nonprofit.
Christen provides targeted mental health and educational programs for community service organizations like The Group Theory and recruits youth volunteers to staff special events including Gotcha’ Back. In turn, participating kids can earn their mandatory community service hours.
“I primarily work with at-risk youth ages 10 to 17 focusing on entrepreneurship, basic life skills, mental health, physical health, and education,” she said. “Someone told me I needed to go meet Kevin, and one day I just popped into his barbershop, and we started collaborating.”
Christen said she started her nonprofit on faith and made it into a success.
“We’ve reached our 10th anniversary, and now the young people the program served in the beginning are adults and are coming back to volunteer with us,” she said.
Also this year, for the first time, the Fayetteville Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority will hold its third annual Candidates’ Fair at the Gotcha’ Back to School Kickoff.
Amanda Williams, 58, first vice president of the nonprofit service organization says the kickoff is a good way to reach a broad audience, particularly for increased voter engagement.
“We know that hundreds of kids will come out to get a backpack, and their parents will be driving them,” Amanda said. “People tend to be kind of apathetic because they sometimes don’t feel like their vote is not going to make a difference, but we believe if we can reach even a few people who have never voted before, then we are moving in the right direction.”
A hallmark of the Sigma Delta Theta Candidates’ Fair is the opportunity for voters to meet one-on-one with local politicians running for office.
“Voters don’t often have the opportunity to sit face to face with candidates on the ballot and ask them questions about issues that are important to them,” Williams said. “We want parents to understand that all politics are local, so it is important not only to meet the person who might be representing them on the school board, we want them to understand that they do lose their voice when they don’t cast their vote.”
The event will also focus on new and aspiring voters and includes a voter registration drive targeting high school students.
“Kids that are 16 can register now, even though they have to wait until they are 18 to vote, but if we get them registered, it will plant a seed in them,” Kevin said. “It’s not too early to help them make the connection between who they vote for and how voting impacts their daily lives.”
For Kevin, the timing for this expanded event is important because he feels the stakes have never been higher.
“We are not doing a good job of investing in our young people,” he said. “Among other problems, we’re taking money away from our public schools and raising teacher pay by 4% is not enough.”
In addition to the Candidates’ Fair and backpack giveaway, Kevin has invited representatives from local service providers, including substance abuse counselors, relationship counselors, the county parks and recreation department, law enforcement, and many others.
Over the years, Kevin and The Group Theory have not strayed far from their roots at Trimmerz. His office is in a small sunny space on Murchison Road, right across the street from Fayetteville State University and near Bronco Square, where Trimmerz is still in business.
“I met most of the people I know from right there in the barbershop,” he said. “I’m fortunate to have an office nearby and the opportunity to maintain the relationships I have in the Murchison Road corridor.”
Murchison Road stretches from downtown Fayetteville to Fort Bragg. “Anchored by Fayetteville State University,” a historically Black university founded in 1867, the corridor is “known as the historic center of African American culture in the city,” according to the city of Fayetteville.
The city of Fayetteville is at work on plans for revitalizing the corridor by expanding housing and improving the road. Kevin believes there is a need for much more, including a full-service grocery store that stocks healthy, affordable, fresh food and other necessary venues and services.
“Many of the things that anybody would expect to have in their community are lacking here,” he said. “In addition to being a food desert, we don’t have a doctor’s office, a lawyer’s office, or a bank.”
Kevin works to help fill some of the gaps he sees through his programs, partnerships, and service on local boards and committees. Last spring, he was among four Cumberland County leaders selected to participate in a nine-month national juvenile justice initiative sponsored by the National Association of Counties’ Juvenile Justice Innovation Network.
Through Group Theory, Kevin partners with other organizations to extend the backpack giveaways beyond the school kickoff event, and participates in four or five events during the summer. One of these events is a Back-to-School Pop-Up to “shop with local vendors” on Aug. 10 next to the Rowan Skate Park on Rowan Street, hosted by a team of young people.
All told, Kevin and his partners will distribute as many as 2,000 backpacks at Gotcha’ Back and other events throughout the summer. Kevin reckons his organization has distributed approximately 10,000 backpacks full of supplies and 20 new bicycles since launching the program in 2007.
It is a labor of love.
“I love people and I love this community,” he said. “We are a strong advocate for alleviating the problems that have caused our residents to be underserved, and we are just as worthy as any other community to thrive.”
As for Kevin, he’s walking the walk and making a difference, one backpack at a time.
2024 Gotcha’ Back School Kickoff at a glance
If you’re going: The event takes place at 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. Aug. 17 at TrueVine Ministries.
Number of backpacks to be given away: 400 backpacks for kids in grades K-12.
Number of backpacks distributed across the Gotcha’ Back program’s lifespan: Almost 10,000.
Local organizations partnering with The Group Theory: Fayetteville Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and F.E.L.P. (Future Endeavors Life Program)
Number of volunteers stuffing backpacks: Nearly 25.
Items in each backpack: Notebook paper, pencils, composition books, crayons, highlighters, rulers, pens, toothpaste, toothbrush, and soap.
Other giveaways: The Group Theory has given away 20 brand-new bicycles in conjunction with the Gotcha’ Back School Kickoff event.
What is new this year: The Fayetteville Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta will hold its annual Candidates’ Fair leading up to the November 2024 elections.
Other giveaways: The GroupTheory is holding a special giveaway on August 10 at the Back-to-School Pop-Up market at Skate Park to distribute 20 custom laptop backpacks to students participating in games and exercises.
How to help: Volunteers, age 16 and over needed to facilitate games, hand out backpacks, and assist vendors.
For more information, email thegrouptheoryinc@gmail.com.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Back to School” August 2024 e-edition here.