(NewsNation) — Every summer for the past few years, residents of Atlanta are greeted by “water boys” — kids who stand at busy roads and intersections and sell bottles of water to the public.
City leaders are worried about the dangers involved, amplified by the shooting death of a water boy in 2021. His mother told local news outlets she wanted the practice banned after her son was ambushed following an argument over $10 he collected selling water bottles.
More and more teens have turned to selling water bottles since the pandemic, especially as schools and other community institutions closed, said KaCey Venning, the co-founder and executive director of Helping Empower Youth (HEY!), an Atlanta-based nonprofit that supports young people.
“Instead of you having small pockets of young Black boys at smaller intersections on the West and the South side of the city, you have 600 Black boys now convening to the streets all over the city because there was no place for them to go,” Venning said.
The solution city leaders have leaned on for the past few years requires viewing the boys’ entrepreneurial spirit as a solution instead of a problem. They started hiring them into innovative nonprofit enterprises that let them safely put their business skills to work.
‘Change the way we’re mentoring’
The same year a water boy was killed, Atlanta resident Ian Elmore-Moore decided to start selling Italian ice. Having grown up in New Jersey, he had fond memories of push carts selling the frozen treat and he thought Georgians might like it the same way he did.
When he took the Italian ice cart around the city he came into contact with several water boys and would strike up conversations with kids. He found out that many of them were at risk — for instance, many weren’t attending school.
When he got the permit to open up his storefront location under the brand Glaciers Italian Ice, the kids kept coming into his shop.
“I asked them if they were legal age to work… And the ones who said ‘Yeah,’ I just started employing them,” Elmore-Moore said.
Elmore-Moore hired water boys and other at-risk kids to work the Italian ice stand while creating a program teaching them character and professional skills. The goal was to give these teens enough knowledge to eventually become owner-operators of their own mobile push carts.
Every boy who applies to work has to go through 12 weeks of training with Elmore-Moore, which teaches them various skills like how to approach customers.
After the training is complete, the boys are eligible for a two-year stint. The first year involves working a paid internship selling to the public. In the second year, they take ownership of a cart.
“We wholesale the product to them in the second year. They learn about inventory. They learn about supply chain. They learn how to make the ice themselves. They even tell me what flavors need to go to certain parts because they know it sells better there,” Elmore-Moore said.
Having spent much of his life interacting with young people — working both as a public school teacher and a gang prevention specialist for the local District Attorney — Elmore-Moore believes the program is valuable because not only does it teach kids real skills, but it also fulfills their need for financial success.
“We have to change the way we’re mentoring. We can’t just do lecture-style and things of that nature. We’ve gotta put some money in that pocket. Nobody wants to hear you until they feel like they’re being heard. And if you’re not meeting their basic needs then mentoring is not going to work that way,” he said.
There are around 20 kids in the program right now.
Moving kids to safer selling
When the water boys’ numbers soared after the onset of the pandemic, Venning worked to try to make their work less dangerous.
“We realized that we had to keep them safe,” she said.
Her organization handed out yellow vests to kids to make them more visible on the street and helped them reconsider the way they approached cars. They also helped some get back into school.
But the kids had a persistent need to make money, so Venning’s organization came up with an idea for them to do it more safely.
They started a program called HEY! Hydrate so the boys could sell water at a city-owned kiosk downtown at a physical stand that is close to a public transportation location (you can also purchase a case online).
She noted while her organization is doing this work in Atlanta, city after city has young people who could benefit from learning skills to do safe work.
“What we realized is that you may call these men different things in different cities but they’re all doing the same thing, which is trying to take care of themselves,” she said.