St. Louis Children’s Hospital awarded Reverend Starsky Wilson, 37, with its Child Advocacy Award this year. The award, established in 1994, recognizes local and state leaders “who leverage their positions, influence and resources to advance the hospital’s mission to do what’s right for kids.”
Rev. Wilson is president and CEO of Deaconess Foundation and pastor (with a prophetic fire) at St. John’s United Church of Christ, 4136 N. Grand Blvd. in North St. Louis.
“Advancing health and hope for children in poverty, this is the mission of Deaconess,” said Greta Todd, director of child advocacy and outreach at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “Starsky Wilson lives and breathes this mission.”
Wilson’s passion for service, the hospital noted in awarding him, is rooted in his personal experience growing up as the child of a single mom and suffering the tragic loss of his brother to gun violence.
A native of Dallas, Texas, Wilson is married to Dr. LaToya Wilson. They have three sons: Starsky II, 9; Dallas, 6; and Mason, 4. He considers his extended family to be his church, as he told The St. Louis American in an in-depth conversation about organizing the community to make it a policy priority for our children to flourish.
“We want to find out how to craft a theory of child flourishing and begin to point at that with policy,” Rev. Wilson told us. “What does it mean to have an affirmative policy?”
The St. Louis American: Why did St. Louis Children’s Hospital give you its Child Advocacy Award this year?
The Rev. Starsky Wilson: At Deaconess Foundation, one of the things I did last year was open the first new grant program in nine years, focusing on child advocacy. We’re providing new grants to non-profits with some unique element relative to an underfunded area that can affect policy that helps people working in the trenches. Last year we gave grants to 14 programs aligned with our service mission.
I also co-chair the Regional Youth Violence Prevention Task Force that produced the region’s first collaborative plan for East St. Louis, St. Louis and St. Louis County. We put together a public health approach to address youth violence prevention.
I’m also working with a small group of funders and service providers to assess regional capacity and engage in the process of youth master planning. Other cities call it “Ready by 21.” We’re providing funds to perform feasibility studies in an effort to align community work, funding and services so children can be better prepared to meet stage-appropriate milestones. A lot has to do with social, emotional, financial and programmatic support being available to them and available in the geographies where they are most needed.
The American: Tell me more about the new grant program and grantees.
Rev. Wilson: We didn’t line out specific issues. Rather, we affirmed the fact that the people providing youth services in different spaces know better than we do what policy and legislation affect their work, and we opened up a competitive process where we invited applications for funding.
One grantee I’m excited about is the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis. They were already providing scholarships and low-interest loans to young people in school. Now they are recruiting a core of those college students and putting them through training and advocacy about the legislative process and ways to approach issues related to college access. These students did research, placed opinion columns and went to Jefferson City to lobby . I’m most excited that specifically the voices of young people are having a direct impact on the legislative process.
The American: Tell me more about the work of the Regional Youth Violence Prevention Task Force.
Rev. Wilson: A number of funders gathered in late 2011, early 2012 to see what we could do in response to violence. We recognized that most of the things you hear are criminal justice solutions, like hot-spot policing.
A group of funders went to D.C. to look at the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention launched by the Obama administration in 2010. It provides select cities with support, assistance and funding. We came back and convened people around a comprehensive plan to apply for support from the federal government. It’s also something we can implement from the ground, with prevention, intervention, enforcement and reentry strategies.
We connected with Vector Communication for a community-engagement process involving the grass roots in developing a plan. We reached a group of more than 300 people – service providers, youth themselves – that made several different recommendations, anything from providing mental health support, to changing legislation regarding reimbursement plans for mental health services, to recommending youth employment as a violence-prevention strategy, to hot-spot resource investment in critical neighborhoods.
I am most pleased now that the city health department has integrated our plan into the city’s long-term health plan and strategy. We’re changing the conversation away from demonizing and criminalizing young people towards talking about their overall well being and how we can invest in it.
The American: Tell me more about Ready by 21.
Rev. Wilson: There are a lot of buzzwords in the social sector – “collective impact,” taking a “multi-sector approach” to solving our most wicked problems, our most intractable problems. We know that poverty has an impact on health and education, and vice versa.
So we began to look at different models and different service providers who are helping the region engage in this work, and we had conversations with staff involving early childhood education, college access, how we frame the youth violence conversation. It’s fine to prevent violence, but let’s talk about youth flourishing. Let’s take a positive approach and see what supports we can bring in.
We are looking for funders who can be supportive of solutions and aligning resources better to help kids – and we’re one such funder.
Deaconess is the only independent foundation in our community that only focuses on kids. We are able to invest our finances and staff time on these issues. We get to address the whole thing and use the educational system as a pipeline, and then insulate that pipeline with health, social and emotional supports – which you only can do when you line up funding and resources, so if there is a gap in service in Walnut Park, someone can be sent to Walnut Park. We’re involved in both the investment team and as staff in the working group.
Now I am serving on a small leaders’ council that is seeking to select a backbone of support for the initiative. We’ll advance to implementing the planning process over the next year or so.
The American: Lately, I’ve been hearing folks from the Missouri Foundation for Health say that they want to be more than checkbook. Is that the way you feel about Deaconess?
Rev. Wilson: Absolutely. We don’t have enough money. We need to add deep community engagement and policy development. What’s being done in policy has not been sufficient to advance children’s well being as a regional priority.
Now I am cochairing with Sue Stepleton (director of the Policy Forum at the Brown School of Social Work) a children’s well being symposium at the Fed in November. We want to find out how to craft a theory of child flourishing and begin to point at that with policy. What does it mean to have an affirmative policy? To set a positive target? And also advocate for that policy.
Our foundation is in a unique position. We are rooted in a faith tradition in the United Church of Christ, so we are in a setting of the church, but we also have independent financial resources. We don’t have to ask for resources. No funder can tell us there is something we shouldn’t say on behalf of children. And we use this unique called space to advocate for people who don’t have a lobby, who can’t vote: our children. It’s all undergirded with financial investment – we own our advocacy with financial investment.
