A steady stream of youngsters showed up at the Charcoal Grill & Modern Buffet in Howard Beach, Queens, last weekend for a back-to-school brunch that memorialized a young man who dreamed of giving back, but whose life was cut short by gun violence.
Organized by the Melquain Jatelle Anderson Foundation (MJAF), the event brought together kids ages 8 to 17 in an effort to help them prepare for the upcoming school year and provided them with backpacks stocked with school supplies. The children also had a chance to connect with peers who understand the pain of losing loved ones to gun violence.
MJAF founder Michelle Barnes-Anderson — the organization’s chief executive and Melquain’s mother — said the foundation’s youth work grew out of a realization that grief reaches well beyond parents. “They grieve in the same amount as the mother. And we started saying it was ‘silent cries,’ because it’s like you sell it, but your heart is crying so loud.”
MJAF, a Brooklyn community-service organization, was founded in memory of Melquain Jatelle Anderson, a John Jay College sociology student who was killed in 2017. The organization supports families affected by violence with healing and wellness work and promotes education and civic engagement. Melquain had hoped to attend law school and to build a community center to help young men earn GEDs and enter college.
This past April, Barnes-Anderson said the foundation started hosting monthly virtual gatherings for kids who lost relatives to gun violence and scheduled in-person activities. The group says it serves about 80 children, ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade. The children come from Brooklyn neighborhoods including Brownsville and East New York, as well as Queens.
The virtual sessions run from 60 to 90 minutes. Children first meet together, then separate into age groups of 8 to 13 and 14 to 17 for discussions that match their developmental stages.
They talk about school, anxiety, friendships, and conflict while learning coping strategies — including pausing to breathe, stepping away from an escalating exchange, and agreeing to revisit a disagreement later. In-person outings are planned quarterly; one earlier gathering paired a peace-themed meetup with bowling in Times Square.
“We like to do the Zoom first,” Barnes-Anderson said. “Because we don’t want people to come in and not know who the other child is or whatever.” Once they meet face-to-face, she said, children recognize details that have been shared online — a favorite color, a sport, a concern about school — and have a starting point for friendship rather than entering a room of strangers.
Barnes-Anderson described the community the children are building as a protective force.
“This is about fellowship,” she said. “We have people you can lean on because you know sometimes that silence could turn into revenge. It could turn into suicide. And the last thing we want is to lose this generation.”
At the brunch, students received backpacks stocked with loose-leaf paper, binders, folders, crayons, scientific calculators, and other supplies. Organizers also included age-appropriate journals to help younger children identify where feelings sit in their bodies, while older students could write about their aspirations. Families were told they could register for laptops to be distributed later through technology partners.
The brunch program’s young ambassadors, MJAF’s Melkenzye Anderson, 8, and Miracle Anderson, 9, the ambassador from the anti-gun violence Meezy Foundation, told the Amsterdam News that the monthly online sessions really help. Miracle said kids “talk about things like everybody’s favorite color and get to know each other, stuff like that.” While Melkenzye added, “Yeah, we can be friends and talk to each other because we have like a group chat.”
Amsterdam News asked how the group helps children whose families have experienced loss, Melkenzye added: “It’s good, it’s good because you can meet new people that you also can tell stories to. Because they all have somebody they loved and then they lost.”
She said she wanted the peace and back-to-school events to help children know one another and “stop violence and everything.”
Steven, 12, another young program participant who asked to be identified by his first name, said his uncle was killed around 2018.
“My family has the trauma of losing, especially on my dad’s side, losing our uncle. It was very sad for all of us because he was a very important person.” Steven said people can imagine the grief he’s gone through, but “you can never truly know something unless it’s happened to you.”
He said the group has helped him develop tools for anxiety and self-advocacy. “It’s taught me coping skills. How to feel when I’m anxious, how to learn to speak up when I feel like I have the words,” Steven said. He hopes to join a debate team this coming school year and, in the future, become a lawyer and possibly play for a Major League Baseball team.
MJAF’s Barnes-Anderson says grief from gun violence should not narrow a child’s future. “We just want to make sure this generation doesn’t grow up heartbroken and suicidal,” she said. “So, we’re going to keep bringing community.”
