"SEI became my second family..."


Jonicia Henderson went to work as Resource Specialist at Madison High School in November 2005 and got busy. Madison hadn’t had a decent Black History Assembly in years and she was going to change that. She asked a friend from SEI to bring her African dance troupe, enlisted students to re-enact historical events, and asked one of her favorite speakers to give a speech. Afterwards, SEI CEO Tony Hopson called to congratulate her.

“I called my grandmother right away and told her I knew I was doing good, because the big man himself called to tell me he was proud of the work I was doing at Madison,” says Jonicia.

After her mother died from complications of lupus when she was five, her grandmother raised Jonicia, her sister, and their cousin. Jonicia heard about SEI while she was a student at Woodlawn Elementary and begged her grandmother to enroll her in the program. By middle school she was admitted.

“SEI became my second family. I was diagnosed with lupus when I was 15 and just before my 16th birthday I had a severe flare-up and was hospitalized for a month and a half. My SEI coordinators always visited, and on my birthday they threw a surprise party for me, bringing me the biggest card I’ve ever seen, and giving me gifts I still have. There must have been 30 friends from the center there that day.”

Now Jonicia is passing on the gifts, building her own family of students — and she’s planning to enroll her own daughter in SEI.

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