On this episode of Love Fort Wayne podcast, we're thrilled to bring you a heart-to-heart conversation with a man who's turning pain into purpose, Angelo Mante, the Executive Director of Alive Community Outreach. Angelo takes us on a journey from his days as a United Methodist pastor, all the way to his stirring decision to lead a mission of nonviolence in Fort Wayne, driven by a family tragedy. His candid storytelling echoes the transformative inception of the Alive program, a beacon we can all learn from about the power of relationships and education in establishing a peaceful coexistence.
This episode is not just a testament to Angelo’s remarkable journey, but a tribute to Fort Wayne's resilience, a community that's writing a new narrative of peace and harmony, one relationship at a time.
On this episode of Love Fort Wayne podcast, we're thrilled to bring you a heart-to-heart conversation with a man who's turning pain into purpose, Angelo Mante, the Executive Director of Alive Community Outreach. Angelo takes us on a journey from his days as a United Methodist pastor, all the way to his stirring decision to lead a mission of nonviolence in Fort Wayne, driven by a family tragedy. His candid storytelling echoes the transformative inception of the Alive program, a beacon we can all learn from about the power of relationships and education in establishing a peaceful coexistence.
This episode is not just a testament to Angelo’s remarkable journey, but a tribute to Fort Wayne's resilience, a community that's writing a new narrative of peace and harmony, one relationship at a time.
We're excited to launch season three of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. The Love Fort Wayne podcast connects the stories of leadership happening in northeast Indiana to imagine, inspire and ignite transformation in leaders, 20 to 25 minutes at a time. I'm Jeff King, ceo and Executive Director of Love Fort Wayne. At Love Fort Wayne, we know that the pillars of a flourishing community are its schools, its leaders, churches and families. Join us as we learn from leaders across the region on how to not just lead but love our city.
Speaker 1:Hey, welcome everybody to the latest episode of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. I'm Jeff King, the CEO of Love Fort Wayne, excited about our podcast today, I'm with friend of mine, angelo Monty, and Angelo, welcome. Thank you, brother, I'm glad that you're with us today. Before I dive in, I'd be remissed. I want to say thank you to some folks that support us. Angelo. Like Brotherhood, mutual and Star Financial, they support us. Tom Shepard supports this opportunity for us to dive in and have a conversation and try to encourage some folks. 20 to 30 minutes here at a time. Angelo, would you introduce yourself to the folks that are listening that don't know who you are, sure?
Speaker 2:So my name's Angelo. Yeah, yeah, I'm a United Methodist pastor. My role right now is I'm the Executive Director of a live community, outreach, which is a new-ish nonprofit. We got started in 2019. Our mission is to cultivate a community of nonviolence through relationships and education. So I know we'll get more deep into the work that we do, but it's very personal to me. Aside from that, my ministry, I'm a husband, my beautiful wife Marie, and we have five children in four different schools. Lord, help us, but that's my heart right there yeah.
Speaker 1:Thanks for introducing yourself. For those of you tuning in, the conversation today is going to be multifaceted because, as Angelo, you spoke about it with the Alive program. I'm so excited to dive into it. I learned more and more about it this past end of summer. You and I had a great couple-hour conversation just recapping up. But it's a multifaceted ministry and outreach that is serving within our schools here locally in Fort Wayne for folks that are here, not from here, tuning in. But also it's just beyond serving our students. It's serving their families, I know it's connecting generation to generation in some really cool ways that we'll dive into and so this is a such a needed outreach and ministry, this concept of peace and unity and nonviolence and peacemaking, especially in our culture and society. Personally I feel that way. But you mentioned something about Alive being personal to you. Can you share with the audience as we dive in now, like what brought you back to Fort Wayne and how this outreach, this ministry, which just personally, has been personally laid on your heart?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So. I was born and raised here in Fort Wayne, and my wife and I moved away with our daughter back in 2009 to go to Atlanta, went down there for school, went to seminary down there and started building the life. We went down there not knowing how long we were going to stay, but it's Atlanta, and after I started being able to ride my bike in December and January, I'm like you know what. I think we might stick around here.
Speaker 2:So we had a few more children when we were down there and life was good until I got a call on September 13, 2016 that my first cousin here in Fort Wayne was murdered, and I have three older siblings. I don't have any. I was the baby in my family, but he was like a little brother to me growing up, and so this is one of those things that it shook me to to my core, like I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I came back to Fort Wayne to attend the funeral, ended up officiating the funeral and even right then in the pulpit, as I was delivering the eulogy, I felt God tugging on me it's time to. It's time to come home. It's time to go back home. And went back to Atlanta.
Speaker 2:My wife and I prayed about this and the following year we were here and it was the call of Abram has all has resonated with me throughout this whole process because it, god, didn't give me a clear vision or any details about why we were coming back home. It was just a go. You know, I'll show you later, yeah, and there've only been a couple of times in my life where I felt a calling that strong, and it was, it was powerful, you know, and people say, oh, it's so great of you to come back home. I didn't have a choice.
Speaker 1:When God calls you like that you just got to go.
Speaker 2:And so we came back and that first year was serving in a church and trying to figure things out, getting to know a lot of families who've been affected by violence, getting to know community leaders, different programs, really trying to identify the gaps in all of it and eventually this vision for, for a live emerged. But it's been hard, man for personally, for my family, we just last week was the one year anniversary or the, excuse me, the seven year anniversary for of his death and it's still a struggle. It's still a struggle. He had three kids in. The oldest is freshman in high school and it's hard.
Speaker 2:There are profound implications that we're still dealing with in my own family.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I've seen that in dozens and dozens of families across the community that we've worked really closely with.
Speaker 1:So it's really interesting. You know, part of our story, that we're connected to you and I, is that, like your cousin, I went to school with him. Like I, you know, I grew up, went to elementary school and high school with him and our smaller schools. You know everybody and so. I knew him as a young person and-.
Speaker 2:Nick Power. If you have a name I'm sure to you know lift that up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so we, you know. Thank you for saying his name, because we don't want to forget that, and just the for me, you even sharing that portion. I think it's great for folks who are listening anywhere that you know the life that we continue to live after a tragic loss a violent loss, you know, shouldn't be absent minded of those who continue to wear and bear the loss of that person that they love. It's such a profound thing for me because it can be off your mind in a second. Your heart might break in the moment, but then it's off your mind in a second. Those folks who are still living life with that grief, with that loss, with that whole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, constant reminders holidays, birthdays, the day of death you know is a big thing and you know it is, and I didn't get that. You know, I grew up I had friends that were murdered, so it wasn't like I'm new to all of this, but it's so different when it's family, that's right, and this is my cousin Right.
Speaker 2:It's a whole other level, even for mothers, for fathers, you know, who've lost a child, or children who've lost a parent, and what we found is that, with so many families, it's very common for them to have experienced this more than once.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, so like my cousin, so like my. You know my Nick's oldest son, you know he's. He lost not just his father, but he's lost an uncle, you know, and there are lots of other families like that that lost them. You know multiple people and so it's just. At the funeral my cousin's funeral I looked out and saw all the kids and you know, I'm just like knowing that many of them had been to multiple homicide funerals. And they're four years old, five years old, and what does that do to your psyche Growing up?
Speaker 2:and seeing that this is normal. You know it's not normal.
Speaker 1:We've normalized it. We've normalized it, but this is not normal.
Speaker 2:It's not what God wants for any of us, right.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's so profound, the generational impact of it all, and if it doesn't break your heart as you're listening to the reality, not just a story, a reality that for many children, parents and loved ones, this is something that hits them more than once in their lifetime, I mean your heart has gotta be softened for that, or gentle in mourning in that, because, like you mentioned, it's not what the Lord desires, and I know his heart mourns for it as well. And so that is a key part of your story, of what brought you back to Fort Wayne, and I love how you said when you and your wife felt that prompting it was like well, we don't have a decision to make, it's been made.
Speaker 2:We're coming back.
Speaker 1:And so you're serving in ministry, which you've done for a long time. You're back for a year, you're serving at the church and you're learning about what's happening in Fort Wayne with victim assistance programs and outreach is those who are leading in those efforts, and we do have a great contingency of people who are doing great work and outreach and nonprofits with mothers that have lost families, victim assistance, so on and so forth. We say you're looking at the gaps and at some point you all were prompted to start a life. Right, tell me a little bit more about a live and what it is. Again, you gave us a highlight as you were introducing yourself. But what's the meat and potatoes? What's the calling? What was the calling into the step of starting a live?
Speaker 2:So we started initially around supporting victims and there are lots of other great things that are happening in the community but one of the areas where we started was a support group.
Speaker 2:I sat in on some other grief support groups in the community and saw okay, on one hand, grief is grief, like if you lose somebody close to you, if you lose a spouse, doesn't matter how, if you lose a child, doesn't matter how, you're grieving right, and so grief connects us as humans. We all experienced that. But there are some unique dynamics with homicides and I think one of those is that somebody did this right, this was an intentional thing that somebody did, so you're wrestling with that and the whole issue of forgiveness and unforgiveness and what to do with that. And then the justice process like working through that. There are a lot of families, including my own, that there has not been any justice, no arrests made, nothing, and so there's that. And often with the justice process, another thing that complicates it is that the family knows the streets, know who did it and you gotta go out and see this person right.
Speaker 2:But for a whole host of reasons, one of which being witnesses not being willing to come forward and speak. It never goes to trial or any of that.
Speaker 2:There are all these dynamics right? And so there was a light bulb that went off for me early on when we had this focused group of families who'd been affected and there was these two mothers that started having a conversation. This was a round table discussion but for about 10 minutes these two had a discussion and it was like none of the rest of us were even there, and the one mother just broke down and she said this is the first time that I've sat down with somebody who understands what I'm going through and there's something to be said about therapy and going through that process, and that's something that we promote with our families. But the support group has its own role and purpose in that having people come together that have been through this unimaginable tragedy, this trauma that they're experiencing, and being able to have a place where they're understood. So even our as our Co-Victim Care programs, what we call it now. But our director, cynthia, she lost her son and that was very important for us to have somebody overseeing that part of the work. Who's been there.
Speaker 2:And so she lost her son on Easter Sunday morning in 2018 on his way to church to meet his mom and she found out at church, got a phone call. So that's the one side in saying how can we come alongside families for the longterm? That's another thing that we saw you have think about, like victim assistance. They have so many cases that come through their department and so they got to get families through a process, and so for us, we're trying to create a longterm kind of support network for families so that we're not getting families through a process. We're helping them to get to a point where they can turn their pain into purpose. But then part of that is how can they?
Speaker 2:If you've been through this and you're five, 10 years, 15 years down the road, how can you come alongside a family that's just now experiencing it and going through it? And so that's that side of the work, right. But as we got into this, we said, all right, what God's called us to do this, and we're gonna continue to do this with victims, victims, families but what can we add to this? What can we do around prevention and intervention and nonviolence and peacemaking? This is something that I've been passionate about for a long time. I did my college thesis, in whatever year that was on this stuff.
Speaker 2:So I've had an interest in it for a long time, but I started looking around at nonviolence and peacemaking programs around the country and I ended up going down to get some training in Selma, Alabama, with Bernard Lafayette who was one of Dr. King's right hand people.
Speaker 2:He was at the Lorraine Motel, actually the day King was assassinated, and so I went through this nonviolence training with them in the King's office and I went through this nonviolence training with them in the Kingian tradition of nonviolence and that connected me to this whole network of people that were doing nonviolence trainings in prisons and schools and communities. And there was one in particular that elevated to the top of the list for us and it's in Chicago. It was called North Laundale College Prep and they had a teacher who was doing this school nonviolence and the principal asked her what it would take to implement her work school-wide. And so they did that and ended up reducing fights the first year by 70%, and they sustained that over a decade.
Speaker 2:So we went to Chicago, learned from them, came back, ended up having this vision for a peacemaker academy. Had the conversation with the principal at Southside High School.
Speaker 2:So, we got to start somewhere, so let's start there. We already had some organic relationships through city life with Southside and we did not anticipate for it to take off like it has. But the idea is that we have a three week academy in the summer. We teach kids the principles of nonviolence, dr King's principles of nonviolence, steps of nonviolence, how to analyze violence at the root level, and then, after you do all of that and also cultivating inner peace, that's a big part of it too, in dealing with our trauma. But then how do you actually organize for peace?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and starting at the school and seeing the school as a microcosm of the larger community, that's right. Because if these students can institutionalize peace and build a culture of peace here, well, these are our leaders of organizations and other you know in the future. And so in just a couple years into this, we're seeing amazing impact and results and the school district has taken notice and we're talking with them currently about expanding this into all the five high schools.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a big referendum coming up and man, so we're part of that and so it's just. God has been so, yeah, he has Good man, and we're just. Yeah, I'm just kind of we don't feel like initially we started this thing and you know I'm not sure at what point this happened, but now it feels like we're not really leading anything.
Speaker 3:It's just we're here for the ride.
Speaker 2:Like God, we're you're in the driver's seat and we're just you know, we're just here for the ride experiencing this, but it's been pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, man. I'm smiling, I mean over here, because I think about, like, when we have these conversations, we want to invite folks who are loving our city collaboratively in unity, you know, in four specific areas. If it's, if it's if they're a pastor, if they're a leader, if they're in education, they're in family ministry, if they're loving in those areas, they're part of those areas.
Speaker 1:But I knew our conversation would be multifaceted because of the work that you all do in loving families and such this, this life altering forever situation that they're in, circumstance that they're in, but also, as you just mentioned, the work that now God has said now I need you to love within my schools as well, where my, where we're, my emerging leaders, where the children are. It's just a beautiful thing. So this is this multifaceted conversation, this dual faceted conversation of loving families will, but also loving schools will, via this, these peacemaking efforts. You said this phrase that caught my attention, which is institutionalized peace, which is just this, this concept that I would really love everybody just to soak in one more time right to institutionalize peace and kindness and love and all the things that peace is truly, truly rooted in. I just love that concept and the concept of we're going to institutionalize it. We're going to deeply root it in the lives of students because if they can get it, they reverberate it out into their school for the time that they're there over, you know, four years, depending their age, one year if they're senior in the academy, but then they go to wherever God sends them or they come back into their city. Now they're raising their own kids and they're working in their jobs and they're working in their business and whatever it is, they've got this firmly rooted grasp.
Speaker 1:But what it means to truly love another person and to lead with peace, even in hard circumstances, is just, it's it's simple, but but it. But it's not simple because I personally think about how many times somebody really frustrates me, and we've had these conversations. So it's like how someone really really frustrate me as a father, whatever it may be and in the human nature, is what am I about to do to make sure that my child is taken care of, that this situation is taken care of? And often we don't think first, peacefully. We don't think about going lower, we don't think about the peace posture that we're actually called to take with one another, especially as believers, but even those who don't believe in Jesus, that this concept of, or their, their, their seekers or their pre seekers, like that concept of peace in the world, is sometimes lost.
Speaker 1:But I just want to commend you all because the work that you're doing in your schools and so we're, you know as we. As we get close to closing now I just want to hear some stories about what you all have seen so far with the peace academy serving at Southside High School, but also having the conversations in the city about where else this is needed within our schools, like what? What are some outcomes, what are some positive stories that you can share with us today?
Speaker 2:Well, so the the first story that comes to mind the last year. It was the beginning of the year and most of our work at Southside at that point was oriented around leaders, you know so, students. So there are summer academy that I talked about. That's four students who are leading positively for the most part. Every now and then We'll look at a, at a student who may have a little bit of a past but, be ready to to lead in a positive way.
Speaker 2:It's not an intervention program, but we were looking to do some more intervention type of work and so our staff, Chris, who's there at Southside he talked with the administration and he said, hey, you know, we would like to connect more with kids that are acting out. And I don't even think he got through his, his sentence, and this particular administrator was like, well, I got just the kid for you to start with because he was having a lot of issues at the time, and so Chris connected with him.
Speaker 2:but at the same time, we had a Bible study going on in our church around violence, gun violence, and one of the folks who was mainly older members of the church and one of them said you know what, what can we do to help this? Great, we're learning about all this, but what can we do to help? So where we had them start was to pray for this young man. I'll call him Joe. Yeah, pray for Joe. Here's what's going on with Joe. And so they did, and that week that we committed they committed to praying for him Chris was able to connect with him in the in the school and Learn about his story and all kinds of trauma.
Speaker 2:Yeah all kinds of trauma is like if I've been through that, what he's been through, I probably punch in everybody I see to you know yeah.
Speaker 2:I just been through a lot with no real support and so learned his story. But then in the midst of that conversation he said to Chris that he Didn't want to keep living like that and that he wanted to be a peacemaker. Chris was like really, wow. He's like well, you got beef with such and such this other student at school. He said how about we start there? He was like all right. He was like okay, let's call him down right now. Wow. So they got this other student out of class, called him down there and they ended up having this conversation and reconciled right then and there and it was done.
Speaker 3:It was over with Wow.
Speaker 2:And so it's been a journey with this particular student there, ups and downs. You know everybody loves a good Road to Damascus story where he just turned on a dime. You know hasn't been all of that. There's been some ups and downs, but he's still at school. You know he hasn't been Expelled or whatever, and that was the path that he was on and so he's been involved in our, in our peace club and our programming, and so that that that's one of the stories that I think of and I say, man, there are lots of kids in our schools right now who are going down a real dark path.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah these are kids that we we see now mm-hmm because often, like teachers, educators, when you see a student that gets arrested for Shooting somebody, right or they or they get killed. Mm-hmm a lot of times. It's not a surprise.
Speaker 2:Right like we can. We can identify who these kids are now, wow, but we don't have always the the model to confront that. And Then God bless our school administration and staff. I mean, they have 1500 kids to think about, right, so it's really hard for them even to To isolate those kids, to give them all the support that they need, and so that's where we come in. So it'll, let us Really pour into this group of kids, because institutionalizing non-violence is about policies and when you have kids acting out repeated fenders.
Speaker 2:How are we going to address that? Are we gonna just put them down a disciplinary path, or are we going to try to do something more restorative, which is the direction that our school system has been going in anyways, which is very encouraging, I think, and so, but yeah, but that story's part, and then what ended up coming out of that as well, was the whole peace, granny and grampy thing, Because after they prayed for this young man, that was like all right, well, what next?
Speaker 2:And then that turned into them coming to lunch once a week or once a month. Sorry, but we're looking to expand that and I don't know how many people we've had at 40 or 50 at one point and another that have been involved. We haven't even tried to grow that.
Speaker 1:Right. And so it's just been-. So you got like the older generation Mainly Mainly.
Speaker 2:There's some peace aunties and uncles in there now too, but yeah, but mainly retirees that come into the school and bring candy and talk to the kids and the kids are starting to get to know them. Oh, they love it. They love it, and this was not an idea that we had. It just happened organically, like most great ideas I have, I didn't come up with it, it just happened, so it's been really cool. You have to move, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like oh yes, another thing, you got it.
Speaker 2:All right, we're gonna move, we're gonna move and now they're looking at like there are other needs in the school. And so they're like we want them more, I mean. I think there's space even for daily.
Speaker 3:They're volunteers.
Speaker 2:We've had a couple that have volunteered in the special needs hall there in the school, and so I don't know where this is gonna go, but it's a really, really beautiful thing. And as we expand, so if the referendum passes in November, the expansion of our program into all five schools former community schools is part of that, and so we're looking to grow that group, cause we would love to not split them up or not have them just focus on one school, really to have this group you pour in the South side and have another group pour into Northrop, so on and so forth, so that they can really get to know the kids and their relationships.
Speaker 2:Not just have a group of people come in Cause. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's the antidote.
Speaker 2:It is, and we got what? One lady sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go for one of our ladies and this part of that, she is Rose as her name, 84 years old, and I mean she's just awesome, but she's faithful and coming into the school and but she's built a relationship with one of our peacemaker students and he's a server in a restaurant and so now she's like goes to the restaurant and, you know, make sure she goes and checks in on them there and so just seeing kind of how these relationships are building is it's just been really beautiful. It's beautiful man.
Speaker 1:It is great word to use. It is beautiful. You know, as we, I hope folks have just been encouraged, tuning in, listening because we wanna uplift where folks are not only leading in their city but loving their city, unto transformation that we cannot do on our own. It's gonna take the power of something that's greater than us, when you and I know that. But I also believe it takes that, that convening power, that collaborative power of us to say yes to one another, to do the work that we've been called to do, to see a flourishing city, to see transformation in our city.
Speaker 1:And so my hope is that those who have tuned in that are from Fort Wayne, but also I've tuned in from all over. This has been an encouragement to them to say yes to the thing that your heart is being prompted to do, is being called to do, even if it's something that is personal and hard, like it's part of your story and your family's story. But it's one of the beautiful ways we can love our towns, our cities, the places where we are, is by leaning in together to the need and loving people where they are. So, again, I think leading your city is loving your city in these beautiful ways, and so, as we close, can you just tell folks where they can learn a little bit more about alive and I just talked about the beauty of convening and collaboration maybe where they can be involved, if it's hands and feet, if it's prayer, share with folks how they can learn a little bit more, even perhaps get involved.
Speaker 2:Sure, so you can visit our website, so alivefworg, or look us up on Facebook. Right now, that's all we got is Facebook trying to get more sophisticated with the social media stuff. We have an Instagram page, but it's not that active. But Facebook, we give a lot of updates as far as what we have going on. But as far as joining the peace family, that's definitely a way to get involved, because we have an open door right now at Southside and hopefully soon into the other high schools. So if people wanna get involved at that level and volunteering in the schools with us, reach out. So you can reach out at infoalivefworg or give me a call, so 260-305-0507. And I'd love to have a conversation about how to get involved deeper.
Speaker 1:I love that. A lot of school year left, y'all A lot of school year left, and also some need, I'm sure, with the families that you work with on the other side. So, angelo, my brother, I appreciate you man.
Speaker 1:Likewise brother, thank you. Thank you for being here and everybody, thank you for tuning in. I hope that you've enjoyed the listen, I hope that you're able to take down a few notes for yourself, and you'll hear me next month on our next Love Fort Wayne podcast. Until then, be blessed and we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for joining us this month. We drop a new episode the first Monday of every month. Love Fort Wayne has some amazing episodes coming up. You don't wanna miss a single one, so subscribe today, wherever you are listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, share and leave a review. We wanna share your thoughts and comments with listeners on future episodes. Thanks again for joining us today. Join us next time, as we hear from leaders that don't just lead, but love our city.