YouthBuild Newark alum goes from soul-searching to Newark’s MVP

Christian Winbush is never afraid to use his whistle. He keeps it perched between his lips as he stops motorists from barreling through the stop signs on West Kinney Street. His face is hard and serious as he directs traffic, but as soon as a student approaches, his tight jaw cracks open into a full, pearly smile.

For the last five years, Christian has been a fixture in the Quitman Street community as a favorite crossing guard. Not only does he protect children as they head to school, he’s often seen sharing his story and his hard-fought wisdom with parents and students nearby. 

Today, Christian confidently knows his worth, but there was a time in his life when he didn’t know his value. So between stop signs and crosswalks, he makes sure to tell the young people he meets that they have the power to change their community.

“I’m valuable now - not only to me, but to my daughter, my mother and I’m somebody to this community,” he said.

Through his childhood, Christian was never far from the streets. His mother and father were both selling drugs throughout different neighborhoods in Newark and Irvington, and his family always seemed to be living from pay-check to pay-check. But even in the hardest of times, he always had his mother as his constant support system. Then one day, everything changed.

When Christian was 16 years old, his family home was raided by the New Jersey State Police. Each member of his household - from his cousin, his brother to his grandmother - was forced to lie facedown on the front lawn as law enforcement searched the home. His mother was ultimately incarcerated, leaving a 16-year-old Christian soul-searching.

“My mother was basically all I had,” he said, “ and when that happened, I basically stopped going to school.”

As he dealt with the emotional pain of his mother’s incarceration, he quickly felt the financial impact his mother’s absence left on the family. While his grandmother’s nursing job went toward rent and utilities, “we barely had food in the house,” he said. 

“And the experience of having your little sister come to you with, ‘What are we going to eat?’ and things of that nature, that’s what really made me decide to leave school,” he said. 

A tear comes to Christian’s eye as he remembers the day he had to quit the basketball team at Irvington High School. Basketball always kept him focused and away from the lures of the hood. He dreamed that basketball could be his ticket to financial independence - for him and his family - but in reality, his family needed food and money today. He couldn’t wait for a dream.

“And once I made my final decision about that, that’s when I went to the streets,” he said. 

He already had friends in the streets selling drugs, so he decided to join them to make some extra money, and grew more active in his gang affiliation. Over the next five years, he’d sporadically attend classes at Irvington High School, but making money was his main priority. Yet through it all, he was in search of something more meaningful than the street life.

“I felt lost, but I knew, at the end of the day, I needed to find a way to get through what I was going through,” he said.

From the age 16, Christian sold on Ellis and 19th, and remained loyal to his gang. “But as time went on, you become older and you become a man,” he said. 

When his older brother was gunned down in a shooting, that was the push Christian needed to find a way out of the streets. At 19, he said, “I’m done with this.” And later that year, he joined YouthBuild Newark, and never looked back. 

When Christian first joined YouthBuild Newark, he met with young people just like him from similar family situations, circumstances and struggles. Some even from rival gangs in the city. 

“A typical day in YouthBuild was, for me, ‘I’ve got to have my guard up,’ because I don’t know what other side might be in here,” he said. “It went away as I started to learn about YouthBuild and started to learn what we were really there for.”

Christian said he was initially hooked by YouthBuild’s philosophy, which emphasized how vital young people are to the community and how much power they possess as changemakers, not only for themselves but their families as well.

“Everything that YouthBuild stands for is what made me who I am today.”

— Christian Winbush, YouthBuild Newark

“I always thought, ‘I have to get out of this environment,’’ he said, but YBN’s model showed him he was valuable in his community.  “I could go be something and come back to my environment and change my environment,” he said.

After a few years at YBN, Christian joined Newark Leadership Academy and graduated with his high school diploma in 2012, before studying Social Work at Essex County College. He graduated in 2015 with an associates degree. And today, he’s studying Social Work with a minor in Psychology at Rutgers Newark. He expects to graduate in 2023. 

Christian directs traffic on Quitman Street.

And as he works toward his graduation day, Christian continues to share those same YouthBuild principles of dignity, love and respect through his job as a crossing guard. While he shepherds children safely across the busy West Kinney Street, he tries to share his wisdom, and use his life story to change lives. 

YouthBuild Newark continues to transform lives today through LEAD Charter School, where the YouthBuild model of workforce development meets an academic environment that supports young people as they pursue their high school diploma, and prepare for the workforce. 

By infusing YouthBuild into a charter school, Christian said he was happy to see the YouthBuild model evolve, but continue to transform lives just like it transformed his. Through LEAD, young people are exposed to a variety of pathways to success where they can build bigger, brighter futures that can change a community.

“The respect, the love, the dignity -- Everything that YouthBuild stands for is what made me who I am today,” he said. “The end goal for me is to inspire as many people as I can while I'm here with the great heart that I got; the great mind I’ve achieved over the years,” he said.