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Heal The Hood Foundation

Heal The Hood Foundation of Memphis

By Terry L. Watson Photos by Ernest Fields

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His purpose is to make someone else’s life better. LaDell Beamon is the CEO of Heal The Hood Foundation of Memphis.

Heal The Hood Foundation of Memphis is a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to wholistic community rehabilitation through its groundbreaking innovative formula for community development. It provides positive outlets for youth of all ages and young adults through singing, dancing, art, acting, motivational speaking, screen writing, and modeling. The impact and impression of HTH speaks for itself. HTH has help to improve academic performance and standardized test scores, help to improve school attendance rates, graduation rates, and post-secondary attendance, develop college and career goals and workforce readiness, help to build self-esteem and self-awareness, reduce bullying and violence amongst youth, decrease discipline referrals, encourage leadership, teamwork, and community involvement, assist with developing character and taught life skills that have helped students succeed in school and beyond, and help to reduce poverty and welfare dependence.

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LaDell states, “If we can positively influence our young people to think before they make decisions, get out of gangs, avoid outcomes that result from peer pressure, stay away from drugs and alcohol, steer away from weapons and other mass destruction, then we have just saved someone’s life and helped them be the dynamic person they were created to be.”

While working hand in hand with the community of Memphis, particularly the churches, ministry principles are incorporated into their efforts and serve as a baseline for reaching others. Being a native Memphian, LaDell skillsets include screenwriting, filmmaking, and that of a composer, director, producer, and youth advocate. LaDell was born into a single parent home in which he was raised by his mother and grandmother. After seeing the lives of several youth being affected by the media, he decided to use his talents of being a musician, writer, actor, producer, director, and minister of the Gospel to become a catalyst for change through the arts. He has worked on several projects and serviced over 400,000 youth with the powerful anti-social deviance tour, The Wake Up Tour. LaDell is also the co-creator of Wake Up Tour Evolution Comic Book Series in which he doubles as the Super Powered Hero “Wake”. This work has added author to his list of many titles, and he still shows no signs of slowing down with a new book series entitled, “Hood Fables”.

LaDell has worked with various celebrities such as Master P, Lil Romeo, Day 26, Vivica A. Fox, Gospel Legend John P. Kee, Ginuwine, Tank, Lil P-Nut, Trevor Jackson, Sammie, Jacob Latimore, Tiny, Robert Townsend, Michael Jai White, Taimak, Adolpho Shabbadoo Quiones, and comic book creator Martheus Wade.

His newly developed passion is to complete the new youth and family facility, fittingly called the Hero Empowerment Center that will house the first fully functional 4D Theater in Memphis, and a Museum of Heroes dedicated to Urban, Modern, Fictional and Non-Fictional Heroes. The Hero Empowerment Center will be the light on the Hill. The Memphis community is extremely fortunate to have a jewel like LaDell. His efforts and dedication will continue to have a lasting impact on thousands of lives for many years to come.

To learn more about LaDell and HTH, please visit their website. h

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