Miami – Miami Dolphins linebacker Gillan Phillips is no stranger to the spotlight.
The #3 high school recruit in the class of 2017 and a first-round selection by the Dolphins in 2021 has been in a senior position long enough to understand the responsibility that comes with it. He’s still human, and public speaking doesn’t come easy.
But back in March, when Phillips was walking into the Broward County juvenile detention center, the feeling of anxiety that usually accompanies giving a speech wasn’t there.
A different feeling stuck with him this time. belief.
Phillips worked with VERB Kind, a community outreach program that serves teens in juvenile detention centers, to remind them that their current situation doesn’t have to define their lives, that there are people who care about them and believe in them.
“When you get to spend time with them there, you see how much potential these kids have. And you see how much they want to do more, how much they want to be better.”
Gillan Phillips, Dolphins linebacker
He met founder Haley Hunt during a House of Athlete meeting in 2021, when she first asked him for help using her trademark slogan: “Come to jail with me.”
The timing wasn’t right for Phillips as he prepared for the draft and his rookie season. As for her posing, well, it’s intentional.
“It literally made people feel uncomfortable,” Hunt said. “I could be like, ‘Hey, come with me to this juvenile detention center,’ but I don’t. I say, ‘Hey, come to jail. or another.”
Once Phillips was able to accept Hunt on her offer, he immediately felt the value of what she hoped to achieve.
When he spoke to teens in the detention center, Phillips wasn’t staring into the faces of children struggling to shed the stigma of their incarceration.
“They feel like, ‘Oh, once I’m in jail, my life’s over,'” said Phillips, who had 8.5 sacks and a fumble recovery last season. “I can’t go to four-year college, I can’t, you know, get These higher paying jobs, I can’t do that.” And the truth is, that’s just wrong. Like, there are so many different ways these kids can go… there are so many different jobs they can work.
“I just don’t think there’s an educational piece out there. I don’t think they’re aware of all these opportunities that are available to them. This is where we can try to get into systems that already have things in place to help these kids, and the educational pieces and counseling — all of that Kiss, so we can help bond them in. Just give them some hope.”
Phillips didn’t manage to get off the scene before planning his next visit. The following week he brought in some teammates: defensive lineman Christian Wilkins, receiver Jaylen Waddell, safety Jevon Holland, linebacker Trail Williams, and linebacker Jared Dukes.
Their visit lasted a few hours, and Phillips said he could tell it made the kids week. Those moments, Phillips said, could change the course of these children’s lives once they are released.
“It’s just heartbreaking for me to know that when you get to spend time with them there, you’ll see how much potential these kids have,” he said. “And look at how much they want to do more, how much they want to be better, but they don’t have the resources.
“…it’s all about just giving them love, giving them some goals and giving them a plan to put them into action so they don’t despair.”
make an impact
Hunt’s work with incarcerated teens began in the fall of 2018, with a visit to the Orange Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Orlando, Florida. Soon after, members of her Bible study group joined her on her visits, which was an almost immediate success at the facility.
Hunt says she was told the teens were behaving better so they could participate in her visits, and in 2019 she said she was asked to “repeat yourself” in each of the state’s 21 juvenile detention facilities. She officially founded the VERB Kind — short for Victory Everyday Restoring Belief — in January 2020. She and her group of about 100 volunteers came up with this week’s playbook. Their visits focus on things like forgiveness, perseverance with perfection, and dealing with trauma.
It’s the same mission she sold to Phillips when they met in 2021.
When Phillips made his first visit to the detention center on March 14, he felt such conviction as he walked through every security door, passed through mural-strewn hallways and common rooms, portable classrooms at a distance strewn around a basketball court and a shelter. football field.
Hunt introduced him to a group of teenagers waiting in one of the common rooms and they chatted. Not from text but from the heart: “Your mistakes do not define you.”
“I felt called to do it,” Phillips said. “I try to connect with them in a way that they don’t feel like I’m just sitting there preaching to them, berating them for their mistakes. I want to make them understand that we all go through struggles, and we can all relate to one way or another.”
Phillips has dealt with adversity in his football career. He was medically retired during his sophomore season at UCLA in 2018 after a series of concussions and a car accident while riding a moped.
“Obviously, I can’t relate to what so many of these kids are going through,” he said. “But everyone goes through their own individual struggles. And what defines you as a man, what defines your character is how you learn from those experiences.
“Your distress does not define who you are, how you react to it.”
Phillips reached out to the Dolphins’ Social Impact Committee, which seeks to operationalize “civic engagement, education, and economic empowerment in South Florida,” hoping to be able to support the detention center by improving some of the facilities within it.
Then, he texted his teammates, and it took no convincing to get them to join him. The players donated soccer and basketball, and played a little bit of each sport during their visit.
“It just gives me hope.”
It resonated just as Phillips had hoped. Despite being constantly reminded of their environment, it was easy for teens and gamers to lose sight of their surroundings.
“It just felt so natural. You almost kind of forget where you are [are]said Wilkins. We’re obviously surrounded by barbed wire and everything around the prison, and the field and court conditions aren’t the best, but you forget all of that when you’re just messing around playing basketball. It’s like you’re playing with your little cousin or little brothers or something – giving them a little knowledge here and there, kind of chopping with them.
“I’m sure they were able to get away with it too, and it just feels like a change in their routine, what they’re used to… throwing up a football, talking to each other like we knew each other, just normal conversation. It felt really good, I Sure enough, for all parties involved.”
The visit emphasized the importance of cycle-breaking, especially for Wilkins and Waddell, who knew people who had been through the reform system. This is how Wilkins learned the value of visiting them before entering the detention center. Even when he was “no one,” he said, his detained friends or family appreciated him coming to see them.
Waddell said he noticed a difference in the people he saw go through the system growing up.
He said, “They change.” “I think they see from an early age, where they could be, at least from the people I know, who have been involved in [the correctional system]. It makes them grow up quickly. And they see it as real life and people doing it in real time – and it can be a way of life if you make the wrong choice. “
Phillips said he wants to work with Caleb Thornhill, the Dolphins’ director of player engagement, to devise a plan for the organization to work closely with the detention center moving forward — specifically when it comes to mentoring these teens once they’re released.
The relationships he was able to build, even in a short amount of time, made him ready for commitment.
“The pure joy you see in these children—that I can see happiness like that man’s,” he said, “just gives me hope.” “And I hope that gives them hope… We just have to find a way to keep them out of this loop.
“I don’t want to just, you know, go five or six times and then screw up and never come back. It’s about the sustained impact and longevity of this thing.”