Jefferson Awards

• Apr 16, 2008 7:48 pm US/Pacific
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  Dedicated Role Models Mentor City Kids

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Dedicated Role Models Mentor City Kids

Jefferson Award Winners: Jesse & Pally Cottonham

Reporting
Barbara Rodgers

For more information on Champions Youth Ministry: call 415-822-2307.

Jesse and Pally Cottonham can name dozens of children who are as close to them as their own. At St. John's Missionary Baptist Church in San Francisco's Bayview District, they are volunteer youth directors, but more like parents.

"It just evolved as we got closer to the youth and they got closer to us," says Jesse. "We started addressing their family needs, their personal needs. Next thing you know, they were bringing in friends. It just grew."

Jesse was picked to be youth director, but the couple, high school sweethearts now married for 30 years, work as a team. For the past eight years, together they have chaperoned field trips to ball games, ski outings, and amusement parks, taught Christian principles and life lessons, and just been there for the children of their neighborhood whenever they needed someone.

"We pay college tuition, " explains Pally. "I pay rent, phone bills, find a job. We have young men, a few of them are struggling, and I say, 'Hey, I'm not going to let you fall.' I told the girls the other day, I said, 'I plan to be at your weddings. I plan to be there when your kids are born. I plan to be there when you graduate from law school. I plan to be there.'"

The Cottonhams have the kinds of jobs that would allow them to buy a home in almost any place in the Bay Area, but they choose to say in Bayview Hunter's Point because they feel it's important that young people there see role models like them."

Eighteen-year-old Shante Austin has been in the Cottonhams' group since she was eight. Now college-bound, she says they inspire her every time she's with them.

"Just seeing their family, like how they're so strong and well-kept, every time I go over there, it's like wow! This is what I want in life," Shante says.

Her 9-year-old brother, Isaiah, is also mentored by the Cottonhams. Their mother feels the couple was sent by God.

Alene Cooper says, "For me, it's meant a great deal because it's a mentor that she can talk to and it's cut some of the slack of the parents would have to deal with."

Despite Jesse and Pally's 8 to 12 hour work days, they volunteer at least ten hours each week with the children they call "Champions." And in a neighborhood where violence claims so many, Pally says, "We haven't lost any of our children to violence. We have not lost any of them to violence."

So for helping keep children safe from the streets and guiding them into adulthood, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Jesse and Pally Cottonham.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)