DeAnthony Solomon is one step nearer to changing into an orthopedic surgeon as he graduates high 5 % of his class at Miami Central Senior Excessive Faculty.

His plan? Go to school, turn out to be a health care provider and assist sufferers that suffer from ailments that have an effect on their bones. The 18-year-old’s grandmother, who has been like a second mom to him, offers with insufferable knee ache that he mentioned solely an orthopedic medical skilled can alleviate.

To get the place he’s now has required laser-like focus in lecturers — however that wasn’t all the time the case.

“I used to be hanging with the mistaken crowd,” he mentioned.

In center faculty, he was invited to affix the 5,000 Position Fashions of Excellence Challenge, the place male mentors present boys with alternate options that might lead them away from a lifetime of crime and violence. The mission was based in 1993 by U.S. Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson, then a Miami-Dade County Faculty Board member.

Today, Salomon is now not hanging with the mistaken crowd. He and over 100 younger males from South Florida pledged Sunday afternoon on the Adrienne Arsht Heart for the Performing Arts to attend school or serve within the army after graduating highschool.

By signing the pledge in entrance of their households and mentors, the 17 and 18-year-olds — carrying black fits, white shirts and shiny crimson ties — promised to get a post-secondary training, the following step of their path towards a promising future.

Wilson mentioned she was very pleased with the teenagers but in addition fearful as a result of they’re being “launched” to a world stuffed with gun violence, crime and racism.

“However now we have poured all the things in them to make them good males in society,” she mentioned. “They may all the time be part of us and we’ll all the time be part of them.”

Shalin Williams, 18, will main in mechanical engineering after graduating from Coral Reef Senior Excessive Faculty. Due to the mentorship program, they’ve fostered a brotherhood through which every member seems out for one another’s tutorial progress.

“With out this system, I’d not be curious about engineering,” he added.

Williams, like Solomon and 40 others, obtained a full-ride scholarship at Tennessee State College. All graduates additionally received attached with free laptops donated by the Miami Dolphins soccer crew.

Jonathan Villalta will main in legal justice at Miami Dade School because of the mentorship program. With out it, the 18-year-old famous, he wouldn’t be getting his highschool diploma.

“This program confirmed me that while you put the trouble a whole lot of good issues can occur to you,” he mentioned.