Homeboy Industries founder Father Boyle speaks to Glendale Noon Rotary

If kinship is one’s goal to achieve with others, then service is the path to get there, according to Father Greg Boyle, who spoke to members of the Glendale Noon Rotary Thursday afternoon about establishing and overseeing the world’s largest gang rehabilitation centers in the world, more commonly known as Homeboy Industries.

The organization provides former gang members opportunities for work in a bakery, café or silk-screen department, as well as other areas of the organization, in addition to receiving therapy or counseling.

While the company’s slogan is “Jobs not Jails,” Boyle said. “A job is nice, but healing is forever.”

When President Barack Obama once visited Homeboy Industries, he struck up a conversation with a former gang member who was working as a custodian at the time.

When Obama asked the young man what he did at the downtown campus, he replied, “I mainly work on myself,” to which Obama said, “I commend you,” Boyle recalled.

Boyle told other stories about personal victories and successes for men and women at Homeboy Industries, but he also shared that just three weeks ago, he attended the funeral of a former employee, the 199th he’s gone to since burying his first employee, due to violence, in 1988.

During the past few decades, with the thousands of former gang members he’s worked with, Boyle encouraged the Rotarians to “seek to dismantle the barriers that exclude” others, and ultimately connect with those living on the margins of society.

“If you can stand at the margins, look under your feet occasionally, the margins are getting erased because you chose to stand there,” he said. You stand with the poor, the powerless, the voiceless. You stand with those whose dignity has been denied. And you stand with those whose burdens are more than they can bear… you stand with the demonized, so that the demonizing will stop.”

Boyle’s attendance at the Glendale Noon Rotary meeting was months in the making, and last fall, he confirmed he would speak to the group, which meets at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, on Thursday.

After his speech, during which he brought men and women in the room to tears, club members presented him with a check for $7,500, and encouraged members to look into donating.

“We all want to join this community of kinship,” said club President Elizabeth Manasserian.