The
Ottawa Citizen
May 3, 2006
Page C3
By
Graham Hughes
Photo:
Rod MacIvor, The Ottawa Citizen / Adrienne Coddett doesn't know
for sure who nominated her for the Investing in People Award,
but
quickly put the money to good use -- helping others.
Printed
with permission from the Ottawa Citizen
In
December, Woodroffe High School teacher and basketball coach Adrienne
Coddett looked at a letter she had received, figured it was a
bill, and chucked it into her bag.
"At the time, I was very down and depressed," she said.
Money
was the issue.
"It was just before Christmas break, by which point I'd usually
notified teachers of our upcoming Black Youth Conference, but
I just was having a horrible money conversation," said Ms.
Coddett, 38, who created and organizes the annual conference during
Black History Month in February to provide a forum for black youth
expression and cultural exploration.
"I had an idea about what I wanted to do this year, but not
the personal funds that I usually invested and I just didn't know
how I was going to do it."
But good news was in the bag. When she got home that night, she
found the letter was from the Community Foundation of Ottawa,
a notice that she had won the 2005 Investing in People Award and
$5,000. The award, the 19th annual, was announced recently.
While Ms. Coddett didn't know the organization or who had nominated
her, she knew what to do with the money. "I sent an e-mail
to four young ladies who'd been involved in the International
Black Summit and said 'How'd you like to come to Ottawa for a
conference?' and that's how we planned the youth conference that
took place in the first week of February."
The conference attracted about 100 students from six high schools,
she said. Ms. Coddett believes she got the award for coaching
basketball and for the foundation she created a few years ago,
Three Dreads and a Bald Head, as an umbrella for her activities.
In 1998, with her coaching partner, long-time friend and colleague
Andy Waterman, she launched the Ottawa Phoenix basketball program,
which gives inner-city black students a chance to showcase their
talents and attract the attention of university and college coaches.
The partnership was formed at St. Patrick's High School where
Mr. Waterman became boys' basketball coach and asked her to be
conditioning coach.
Ms.
Coddett was born in 1967, the year her Guyanese parents moved
to Ottawa. She attended Lester B. Pearson school in Blackburn
Hamlet until Grade 8, then Gloucester High. Track and field --
long jump and triple jump -- was an important part of her life
from the age of nine until 1993, when she was forced to retire
due to stress fractures in her legs.
She went to Howard University in Washington before attending the
University of Ottawa for teacher training.
Going
to Howard in January 1988 was "an incredible experience for
me," she said.
"For the first time, I was not the only black student in
class or the only black student in the room." The school
offered "an incredibly nurturing environment."
Ms. Coddett was hired to teach at Woodroffe High in 1998, straight
out of the University of Ottawa. Much of her community involvement
was motivated by an International Black Summit in Toronto in 2002,
she said.
"The summit experience was so profound for me that I began
to say 'Wow, if in 2002 when I was 35 (and) this could have such
a dramatic change in me, imagine if that power of that summit
conversation could be given to summit students.' "
A second summit, in Brazil in 2003, further inspired her.
"In
2004, we were going to Ghana, so in 2003, I came up with the idea
of taking some students to Africa," she said.
That
sparked the annual conference at Woodroffe and the foundation
that helps people of black African descent to identify and maximize
their potential, mentally, physically, spiritually and economically,
she said.
Last year, Ms. Coddett started a literary series. She had interviewed
Jamaican author Colin Channer on her radio show, Black on Black,
on University of Ottawa radio station CHUO.
After she read his first book, she found students were reading
-- and loving -- his second book, which she found a challenging
read. An e-mail brought him to the school last spring.
Mr. Channer was followed in February by Kwame Dawes, a poet, teacher
and critic and an authority on Bob Marley.
A
basketball camp, with Phoenix players as mentors, started in 2003
but foundered over time constraints and funding. It will be resurrected
with some grant money, she said.
She
has also worked to raise youth awareness of the global impact
of HIV/AIDS.
These
activities have brought her recognition, but her actions "are
kind of selfish, really," she said with a laugh.
"I understand the young men and young women we work with
have figured out things that will allow them to make their commitment
to the community, which means the community is in good hands and
I will always be taken care of."
© Ottawa Citizen 2006
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