Every day, buses pick up nearly 150 students from Vicker y Meadow-area schools and bring them to a Vickery Baptist Church program – Youth Believing in Change – for tutoring and after-school meals. For the children, it is more than tutoring and supplemental education – it ’s the mentorship that’s setting them up for success.
Youth Believing in Change, also known as YBC, is a nonprofit that focuses on giving children a spiritual and educational foundation in order for them to succeed in life. It was created by Vince Gaddis on June 6, 1995.
Gaddis’ upbringing landed him with “the wrong crowd,” he says, leading him to deal drugs at a young age.
In and out of prison for years for drug-related arrests, Gaddis was denied parole multiple times after his last arrest. Before his last parole hearing, however, something changed. He realized that he wanted to dedicate his life to his faith.
“I had an epiphany or an awakening with Christ Jesus,” Gaddis says. “I began to speak and I just said, ‘I want to get out of jail, settle down, go back to school, become a lawyer, get married, have a family and start going to church every Sunday.”
According to Gaddis, the judge looked at him, rang the gavel three times and said, “Mr. Gaddis, for some strange reason, the court is going to have mercy upon you and release you into the custody of your aunt and uncle.”
Following his release, Gaddis started going to church, which led to him going to college to pursue pastoral work.
“God is calling me into ministry. And so I said, ‘OK , well, I need to go to school and get my degree,” Gaddis says.
Gaddis went on to get his four-year degree at Paul Quinn College and then continued at Dallas Theological Seminary, where he received a master’s in Christian education. During this time, he began to work with children and teens who had committed offenses related to drug dealing.
“My step father was a teacher and I grew up with a strong educational and biblical foundation,” Gaddis says. “(The children in the program) didn’t have that. So I thought to myself, ‘I need to catch ’em younger.”
Soon after, he discovered AmeriCorps, which had a program working with children in the inner city. Although he had doubts that he would be hired because of his criminal record, he didn’t lose hope.
“I went down, I told ’em my story. They had a meeting that same day, and they called me back and they said, ‘ We think you’ll be a good fit for our program,” Gaddis says. “You’re in college. You have had a good foundation and a lot of the children right now, you can relate to their parents.”
In 1995, Gaddis considered resigning to pursue the creation of Youth Believing in Change full time. However, an interaction with a little girl in the AmeriCorps program encouraged him to stay for another year.
“A little girl came in with an envelope full of thank you letters that day. And this
one envelope that she gave me, it was a thank you card,” Gaddis says. “ When I got that card, I’m telling you, my heart literally shook. And I sat down and I felt a sense of affirmation that money, drugs, nothing ever gave me.”
In 2021, Gaddis began working with Vickery Baptist Church. He had a plan to create new programs focused on at-risk children. After sharing his idea with donors, the church raised a million dollars to rebuild the church’s site to accommodate the 7, 500 kids in the neighborhood as well as children who “are struggling with getting on the right path in life.”
“I understand those people because I was from that life. So I said, ‘ Well, wecan have a full-scale ministr y here. We’re not going to ignore those people, but the children are still going to be first,” Gaddis says.
After successfully reaching 3,000 people a year, the organization is looking to expand further. Gaddis hopes to raise enough money to accommodate more children in their after school and summer programs as well as add a program specialized for teens.
“We don’t do it for the money. We do it because we want to make a difference,” Gaddis says.
