Community Corner

Charles Archer: Started From the Bottom, Now He's Here

"The ship only moves when everybody paddles in the same direction towards the same goal."-- Charles Archer, CEO, EDCSPIN

Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, around the corner from the A Train on Nostrand Avenue, Charles A. Archer works 12-hour days, seven days a week enhancing the quality of life for more than 1,000 persons with disabilities across underserved communities in Central Brooklyn.

Archer, 39, is the co-founder and CEO of the Evelyn Douglin Center for Serving People in Need, with offices in Sunset Park and Mil Basin, as well as dozens of group homes across the borough, including ten in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Charles A. Archer started from the bottom, now he’s here!

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Only his "here" is back home-- in his old stomping ground, around the very same people with the very same issues he experienced while growing up.

And it’s all sort of ironic, considering Archer spent the majority of his life trying to get out of his 'hood.

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“I remember hearing gun shots religiously, seeing people dead on the street from my window. And at one point, we lived next door to a major crack house,” said Archer.

“I watched television from the perspective of, Why isn’t my life like that? Why don’t I have neighbors like that? Why are my friends doing this? And then ‘The Cosby Show’ changed my idea of what I could have. ‘A Different World’ showed me black college.

“But what excited me, what stirred me the most was the possibility to get out and see something different,” said Archer. “I realized education was the only way I was going to change my situation and my family’s situation.”

After graduating from high school, Archer attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. But he had to drop out and return home after his freshman year, because he needed to earn money.

He found a part-time job working the evening shift in a two-person group home, which afforded him the flexibility to work at night and still drive three days a week to attend school part-time during the day.

He loved his job. Each year, he grew within the organization and eventually graduated from college.

Then a few years later, while traveling with a colleague, he came across an American Way flyer titled, “Start Your Own Not-for-Profit.”

“So we filled out this form on the airplane, mailed it when we got off the plane, and things got rolling,” said Archer smiling widely.

That was in 1995. By 1996, the two had written proposals, received grants and formed the Evelyn Douglin Center for Serving People in Need (EDCSPIN), a program whose goal is to provide individuals with developmental disabilities and/or mental retardation the opportunity to learn skills needed to reach their highest level of independence while insuring they experience the same privileges and opportunities enjoyed by all members of our society.

The entrepreneurial pair started out with one group home apartment and have since grown the organization to what it is today— A 500-person staff managing 30 group homes that serve more than 1,000 learning disabled “consumers.”

EDCSPIN is a pre-vocational program for people seeking employment. The organization’s consumers learn how to write resumes, look for jobs, and gain socialization skills and the tools for independent living.

“What’s great about EDCSPIN is that when we open up a group home for people, you won’t know it’s a group home, because we want them to live just like everybody else,” said Archer.

“When we create homes for them, they have beautiful furniture, they cook, clean, maintain their own houses, take care of the lawn, the stoops, the roofs,” he said. “And because they have to live at a certain standard for our organization, it increases the property value as well.”

“Everybody Paddles,” said Archer of his organization’s primary tenet. “As the CEO, my job is important. But everybody else’s job is equally important, because the ship only moves when everybody paddles in the same direction towards the same goal.

Consequently, “Everybody Paddles” also is the name of a new book Archer recently published in November 2012, anecdotal stories of people’s individual successes through effective partnering and collaboration.

EDCSPIN recently was approved to provide services in Trenton and Newark, New Jersey. And Archer says, that’s only the beginning: He plans to grow the organization nationally.

“We’re pretty excited about what we’re doing, which is help empower the very people who need the most help,” said Archer.

“I believe God places each of us on this earth to do something to contribute in some way.

“I find happiness being able to do something in my life that is bigger than Brooklyn, bigger than New York City. Bigger than me.” 


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