Never Too Old to Get Rich

CHAPTER 14Hope in Harlem

Jamal Joseph, Impact Repertory Theatre Courtesy of Encore.org / Talking Eyes Media.

Jamal Joseph stood powerlessly on the Harlem pavement. He was outside his apartment building in 1997, watching a ring of women mourn, cry, and comfort the mother of a 16-year-old boy, who had been shot and murdered.

The adolescent had lived next door. “He was a good kid, who was defending his sister,” says Joseph, now 65 and a professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University School of the Arts in the Film Department. “There were several other men with me, and all we could do is watch the women cry,” he says. “I thought, I have got to do something right here in this community to make a change.”

The year was 1997, and Harlem was like “a prison without bars,” Joseph says. “The crack epidemic was ravaging the community and buildings were crumbling. It was like a powder keg,” he said. “And that was when I decided to create an organization to help young people understand there are other ways out, other options, other tools.”

I met Joseph in 2015 when he was awarded a cash prize of $25,000 in recognition and support of his work. He was one of that year’s six winners of the Purpose Prize, then awarded to Americans 60 and older who have had an impact on the world.

The award was created by Encore.org, a nonprofit that has spent 20 years building a movement to tap the ...