Mother and Roseland Resident continue to offer young people a safe place

Diane Latiker founded Kids Off the Block to give young people a safe place in the Roseland community. PHOTO PROVIDED BY DIANE LATIKER
Diane Latiker founded Kids Off the Block to give young people a safe place in the Roseland community. PHOTO PROVIDED BY DIANE LATIKER

 Mother and Roseland Resident continue to offer young people a safe place

By Tia Carol Jones

Diane Latiker is the mother of eight children. Latiker wanted to make sure her youngest daughter graduated from high school and went to college. She started taking her daughter and her friends to different places.  It turned into something else.

Latiker thought she would spend her days after getting her youngest off to college, going fishing with her husband.

“There was another power that said, ‘OK, you have this opportunity to help young people,’” Latiker said.

Latiker, with the encouragement of her mother, decided to help her daughter’s friends, ages 13-15. She thought she knew the nine boys and girls, but she had no idea. She invited them into her living room and sat down and listened to them.

Next thing Latiker knew, there were kids she never met were showing up at her door. In the span of three months, there were 75 young people in Latiker’s house. That was in 2003. She hasn’t closed her door to young people since then.

At 46 years old, Latiker discovered her passion and founded Kids Off the Block. The non-profit organization offers homework help and mentoring, as well as other activities. The goal is to promote personal and social growth, educational achievement and good health with a holistic approach providing a positive environment for the young people it serves.

Latiker turned her dining room into a computer lab, using money from selling a television to purchase computers.

“Those young people didn’t know who I was, I was a stranger in their community. They had enough courage to come to my house and ask for help. What do you do? You open the door, and that’s what I did,” she said.
Latiker’s work with the Kids Off the Block had to pivot during COVID-19. Latiker and her husband took a van and put food in it. They started taking food to the young people they would normally help. The organization, at one point, was taking 600 meals a day across the city, and they were traveling more than 300 miles a day. It was something Latiker knew she had to do because the need was so great.

Kids Off the Block works on violence prevention and has expanded to work on getting young people vaccinated.

Latiker said what young people need above everything else is “us.” She remembers needing adults when she was a young person. She recalls a woman in the neighborhood named Ms. Jones who made sure Latiker was OK.

“If we had 100,000 Ms. Joneses in our neighborhoods it would be so cool, because young people need that. The doors are closed to them,” she said.
Latiker acknowledged that while young people are the victims and perpetrators of violence, adults in neighborhoods have to get to know the young people in their neighborhoods.

Latiker wrote the book, “Kids Off the Block, to inspire others and to show if she could do it, others could, too. The work is hard, but it is worth it. She wanted people to see up close what it could take to make a difference in their community.

For others, Latiker advises people to start where they are, not to label young Black people, and to be bold enough to talk to young people.
“We have got to realize that we are either part of it, that’s silence, or we are part of it, we’re involved. What are we?,” she said.

Latiker believes it will take mass collaboration and a citywide safety net to end the city’s gun violence.  Impacting people’s lives starts from the bottom up.

For more information about Kids Off the Block, visit http://kidsofftheblock.us.

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