By Shirley Hawkins

Contributing Writer

SOUTH LOS ANGELES — Tamekia Strayhorn is on a mission to provide much needed resources to her community.

Strayhorn, a Pittsurgh transplant, vowed to rectify many of the ailments she saw as she drove through the city’s streets.

In March 2022, Strayhorn founded Here to Help Foundation, a nonprofit that offers housing navigation, case management, mental health services, parenting skills, substance abuse help and even a GED program.

‘When I made this promise to myself, I didn’t know how to start a nonprofit,” Strayhorn said. “I met Touria Nobin from Blue Shield Law, who said she could help me start my nonprofit for $2,700. I told her I didn’t have the money.

“I was surprised when she called me back the next day and said she saw my vision. She would provide me with her services for free.”

Since then, Here to Help has grown into a community resource center where clients and walk-ins receive immediate help Monday through Friday. Strayhorn also partners with 20 other organizations to offer help to those in need including the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

“We estimate that we have helped 400 people since we opened our doors,” Strayhorn said.

“We guarantee professional consultation from a cordial team that will go above,” said Strayhorn, who added that she and her staff treat each individual seeking help with the utmost respect.

“We even offer showers to our clients and will wash their clothes,” she said, adding that Here to Help also distributes hygiene kits.

Strayhorn knows only too well the perils of living life on the edge.

At the age of 12, her mother moved the family from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. Strayhorn, who had secretly joined a South L.A. gang and had a gang-banging boyfriend, booked a plane ride back to South L.A. to be with him and her gang family.

“I was having problems at home,” said Strayorn, who soon became pregnant.

“He was abusive,” Stayhorn says about her boyfriend. “We were locked into a domestic violence relationship. We had nowhere to go, so we slept on friends’ couches.”

Unable to keep Strayhorn from running away, her mother placed Strayhorn in the foster care system from the ages of 13 to 17.

“I was the youth, I was the pregnant teenager, I was the runaway, and I was the face of homelessness,” Strayhorn said, adding that she regularly smoked marijuana and sherm, which was a cigarette containing marijuana or tobacco dipped into embalming fluid.

During her wayward youth, Strayhorn never forgot her dream of wanting to help her community.

“I always knew I wanted to help the homeless and gang members,” said Strayhorn, who said that with gentrification placing a stranglehold on the Black community, one of her main duties was providing housing.

With the epidemic of drugs plaguing Southern California, Strayhorn and her volunteers are regular visitors to McArthur Park to distribute Narcan kits for free. The kits are known for saving lives of drug users who overdose.

“We once had a man who strolled into our offices who wanted to use our restroom,” Strayhorn said. “We had no idea that he was using methamphetamine. He overdosed in the bathroom. My staff hurriedly used Narcolan to revive him and then they called an ambulance.”

The grateful man soon recovered.

“Weeks later, he came back and thanked us for saving his life,” Strayhorn said.

Here to Help is located at 7409 Crenshaw Blvd. and at 2728 W. 54th St.

It can be contacted at [email protected]. or by calling 323-305-6631.

Shirley Hawkins is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers. She can be reached at [email protected].

Article Link: Once Troubled Teen Gives Back Through Nonprofit