Helping the next generation

Fifth in a 12-part series.

Harold B. Folley says Westhaven used to be his stomping ground for selling drugs.

He was a teenager when he was convicted on cocaine-related charges in the public housing project in Charlottesville, which landed him behind bars for more than three years, he said.

Now, 37, Folley is a community volunteer and organizer. And he hopes that as the coordinator of the Westhaven Afterschool Program he can guide young people toward success and away from making some of the same mistakes that tarnished his youth.

“[I know] how easy it is to get incarcerated, if you don’t have the right guidance,” Folley said.

In his 20s, Folley worked odd jobs, but employment was hard to come by. He once applied to clean floors at the University of Virginia but was denied because he had a drug conviction, he said.

Folley, who was raised in Westhaven, said there used to be “crack heads” at every corner. Nonetheless, he said he could have chosen to keep outside the rough neighborhood mayhem as a teenager.

“I could have played football. I was a big football star,” he said. “I could have went to the Army.”

But having been incarcerated has caused him to become a stronger person, said Folley, who’s lived in Westhaven his entire life and now is married and has five children.

“It made me become who I am now, to think more positive about helping other people,” he said.

Folley sees young people in the community who, without guidance, he fears could drop out of school and head in the wrong direction.

Several years ago, he interned for the Public Housing Association of Residents, a local nonprofit that aims to empower low-income residents to protect and improve their communities through collective action. He became a community organizer for the Virginia Organizing Project, a statewide social justice grassroots organization, through which Folley is fighting against car title loans and racial profiling and promoting health care and tax reform.

Not long thereafter, he began volunteering for the Westhaven Afterschool Program. Dozens of students, ages 5 to 14, go to the afterschool program at the housing complex’s recreation center.

After three years of volunteering, Folley became the coordinator of the program.

Folley’s first-grade teacher, Ellen Spencer, is now one of the afterschool program’s volunteers who help students with homework and enrichment activities during program hours, which are usually 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Spencer, who retired from a 40-year career at Burnley-Moran Elementary, said Folley greets people with a firm handshake and a big smile and goes the extra mile to get to know all of the students and their parents.

“He doesn’t see it as just a job,” Spencer said. “Here, these children come in and they see someone who obviously wants to be with them.”

Folley said he thinks that the students generally enjoy the afterschool program, but the caveat is — with the help of volunteers — that all of the students are made to do their homework. Folley has been strict about students doing their homework, though it’s caused some teenagers to turn away.

“If they choose to leave, there’s nothing I can do. And it hurts me for that moment,” Folley said, adding that he then has no choice but to turn his focus back to students who want to be there.

Folley said he hopes to eventually expand the program to five days per week, and open it to those between the ages of 15 and 21.

When the weather is nice, students go on field trips. “If you can get the kids outside their environment, they can see some opportunities,” he said.

Folley is also a mentor for Light House, a nonprofit media education center that allows youth to make films about personal expression and local stories.