NECS Program Offerings

• Parental Support–Parent Aide: Parent coaching and support In collaboration with parent(s), a Game Plan is developed that supports improved mental health, self-esteem, parenting, and social functioning. Goal: Helping parents be better prepared to support their children and household.

• Clinical Evaluations: NECS provides more in-depth assessments to target service needs. Our

“Expanded Parenting and Individual Evaluation” options and a new “Psychological Testing” service use quantitative measures. A clinically informed qualitative evaluation combined with selected quantitative measures can produce more accurate, well rounded, and comprehensive reviews of a parent/family’s functioning. • PREP–Professional Readiness and Employment Program: A professional readiness and engagement program. Goal: To make significant improvements in communication, leadership, adaptability, time management, and collaboration skills of participants. LinkedIn identified these areas as the top five soft skills most required for successful employment. Goal: To also impact the participant’s mindset towards becoming motivated, proactive, resilient, and self-confident young people. • Aftercare: This program is designed for participants whose case is officially closed but with whom we stay connected in order to complete outstanding goals/work. Goal: Ensuring families remained connected and received individualized services needed to complete their goals.

NECS also offers various service offerings that are open to all NECS participants, regardless of the program.

• F.I.T. (Finding Inner Toughness): A fitness and nutrition series.Goal: Ensuring youth cultivate a lifestyle of physical fitness and health • PARENT INITIATIVE: Parent groups and programming for mothers and fathers. Goal: Providing families in the community with wrap-around support services and support. • Remote Academic Engagement (RAE): NECS offers distant learning support, tutoring, and other academic supports for students who want to improve educationally. The program includes a music and arts engagement component. • MAL (Malchester Reeves Scholarship Fund): The Malchester Reeves Scholarship Fund is designed to recognize and provide capacity support for students who exemplify the values of integrity and scholarship for NECS clients. Goal: Providing access to computers, financial support for college courses, and coaching for emerging college students.

ROOTED IN LEADERSHIP

The late Malchester P. Reeves, affectionally known as Mal, was born on September 21, 1935, in rural Alabama, during a time when the Great Depression threatened the vitality of black families but also began to challenge long-standing disparate racial hierarchies. His mother, Ethel Jackson Black, was a strong-willed single mother who likely could not conceive of her son’s future reach and influence when he was born. Though his father, Malchester Reeves, Sr., was not an active presence in his life, Mal was blessed to have the positive and consistent influence of aunts, uncles, and other community elders who played a part in raising him. It was the love, support, and belief of an entire community that helped ensure he developed into a role model for other young black men and women, and not a statistic and stereotype.

Education served as the catalyst for Mal’s success. He began his collegiate career at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA, which became known at the time as the Black Mecca for college students. Although he enjoyed the sense of independence and cultural pride cultivated in that HBCU climate, Mal knew the experience could never override his sense of duty to family. He decided to return home at the conclusion of his second year so that he could find work to help his mother pay the bills and maintain the household. That choice launched his life on an unforeseen, but certainly, pre-destined path. It was during this time that he met and married the beautiful Audrey Short. They began a family in Syracuse, New York with the birth of their eldest daughter, Paula; and what began as a slight academic detour became the source of his greatest achievements.

In 1961, at the ripe old age of 24, Mal became the first man of color to be elected to office in the great State of New York after campaigning for and being elected to the post of Ward Supervisor in Syracuse. Though Mal only served for one term, he made an indelible mark on the city during the climax of the Civil Rights Movement. While he continued to earn his undergraduate degree at Syracuse University, Mal joined Crouse Hinds as an engineer, which was a significant achievement for any black man in that era. Soon after, he and his wife welcomed the birth of two more daughters, Tracey and Cynthia, and his blossoming family spent some time following the path of other young black families making the journey farther north at the end of the Great Migration. His youngest child, son Mark, was born in Rochester, NY, spent time in the mid-west in Chicago soon before the family relocated again to New England Boston, Massachusetts.

While living in Boston, Mal finally earned his undergraduate degree from Northeastern University. He made the wise decision to continue the course of his education and later earned a master’s degree in Public Management from the same institution. He held a number of engineering positions in Boston and Chicago during the course of his long career before ending at GTECH as Senior Vice President.

Throughout the course of his life and career, Mal set a standard of excellence. Without being preachy he shared his wisdom and secrets to success whenever possible; according to his family, he had an anecdote for every occasion. Mal was careful to let his life do the telling and he altered the course of American history with his example. His prominent example was one of the primary reasons his son Mark founded New England Community Services (NECS) in 2007. Mark felt that every young person should have the chance to experience a coach, a mentor, a teacher, a supporter, and a champion as he did.

Change agents are not just born into this world. They are cultivated through deliberate life choices, a passion for education, a commitment to integrity, and a dedication to service designed for the greater good of all.