20 • Progress 2022
Stronger Together
Speaklife
Vision starts beginning of a community organization
By Frank Davis Speaklife — an organization inspired by a vision, dedicated to building a better community through action, speaking positive, spreading love and celebrating life. In his younger years Kashif Carter grew up in Franklin, later his family moved to Isle of Wight County where he graduated from Smithfield High School. After graduation his career path led him to a position as a welder at the Newport News Shipyard. Carter found he didn’t care for that so he changed direction and went to work for the Virginia Department of Prisons at the Sussex One for about six years. Following his time at Sussex One Carter switched careers again and went back to the shipyard. This time he entered the
SUBMITTED | FRANK DAVIS Kashif Carter takes a moment to speak with and encourage team members.
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electrical field and became an electrician where he worked his way up the ranks and became a crane engineer supervisor. During this time span Carter married and together with his wife Shontelle they have 3 children, Jaylin age 16, Alayna age 8 and Brianna age 2. These days the Cart-
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er family calls Boykins home. When asked about Speaklife and how it came about Carter explains that in January of 2016 he had a vision. While lying in bed one night, the words “Speaklife” kept popping up in his mind. Later in a dream a vision of Speaklife was laid out for him. After awakening from his sleep, Carter asked God for direction. After prayer and talking with local pastors, Carter noticed that he got different interpretations about what Speaklife means — for some it’s heart problems, and for some its going through abusive relationships, for others its marriage problems. But as he continued to talk with people, he realized that there was a bigger vision for the words, “Speaklife.” He realized what was needed in the community was for Speaklife to be a community organization. Carter started to
connect with people in the community, pastors, church leaders and school personnel, to find out what he and Speaklife could do to help. He soon discovered that by sharing stories about life’s situations, people could help each other with problems that were being encountered in life. He also found that not only was he focusing on the youth of the community but their parents as well. As a next step in making Speaklife a reality, in 2017 Carter stepped out on faith and put the words Speaklife with the addition of a heart on a T-shirt. He showed the T-shirt to a few people and they all responded favorably. This led him to produce 300 T-shirts. To his surprise he sold them all within a month’s period of time. He used all the profits from the Speak-
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