Quanesha Mullins

2024 Fainting Robin Distinguished Scholar

Although the population of Wilmington, North Carolina, grew by 52% between 2002-2020, the crime rate during that period dropped by 54%. Police chief Donny Williams attributes the reduction in crime to the collaboration between his officers "and non-profit organizations, faith-based communities, and the citizens of Wilmington." Quanesha Mullins, the founder and executive director of the Wilmington-based nonprofit Port City Period Youth Empowerment, has been an important agent of change during this period.

Mullins has devoted her life to providing education, training, and opportunities to the residents of Creekwood, a Wilmington Housing Authority public housing development where the residents’ average income is less than $20,000 per year. More than twenty years ago, Mullins moved from New York to Wilmington, and settled in Creekwood. On her first night in her new home, she watched a man attack a police car. "We left New York, the heart of New York, the Bronx at that, to move in Creekwood," she recalled. "And it’s the same behavior."

Initially, Quanesha Mullins spent as little time in Creekwood as possible. Then one day, a neighbor asked her, "If you don’t like it, what are you doing to make a change?" That question hit home and the mother of two young boys began to do small things to improve the lives of those around her. After the Creekwood community acquired a van, Mullins organized trips for her sons and their friends. She regularly packed seventeen boys into that van and drove them to games and other events in and around Wilmington. Snacks, permission slips, logistics—Mullins did it all because she wanted her sons and the kids they grew up with to be "safe and successful."

One of Quanesha Mullins’ first big victories came when she got the Cape Fear Public Transportation Authority to provide a bus stop for Creekwood’s students. After successfully petitioning for this, she realized that "any small victory counts." Instead of expecting outsiders to improve her community, she needed to make the changes herself. "People want to bring programs out here, but they don’t want to talk to the residents," she said, "and actually see what we need, not what they think we need."

What Creekwood needs today, according to Mullins, are more of the types of after-school classes, youth activities, and vocational programs that her nonprofit, Port City Period, provides for children and at-risk teens. The hope of a brighter future is what she believes will help Creekwood’s youth break the cycle of gangs, drugs, prison, and government dependence. To her these are not abstract or academic issues, they are deeply personal. Of the seventeen boys she once drove in the Creekwood van, today only two are not in prison or dead. This grim statistic includes her own son who will spend the next twenty years behind bars.

"If you just give up because of one incident or trouble, you might as well just stop everything," said Mullins. "You have to keep going, you just can’t give up because there is trouble everywhere. People need to take a chance on Creekwood, take a chance on the residents because there is a lot of great people out here." In addition to the cash award, Fainting Robin Foundation director Peter Maguire will also teach an afterschool writing class and provide college counseling to students at the Creekwood South Learning Center in 2024. FRF will also teaching skateboarding in Creekwood, and former pro skateboarder/owner of Eastern Skate Supply, Reggie Barnes, has generously agreed to provide the skateboards and protective equipment.