Seven teens complete Project Inspire mentorship program for spring 2025

By Casandra Andrews
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While the large conference room at the Strada Patient Care Center is usually reserved for health-related meetings, on the evening of May 19 it was a place where seven students and their families gathered to celebrate a new beginning.

Dressed in dark jackets and crisp white shirts, the teens were there to officially mark the completion of Project Inspire, a hospital-based injury prevention program designed to curb violence among youth through intentional programming and mentorship.

The students were selected to participate in the semester-long program at University Hospital through a partnership with the James T. Strickland Youth Center. Since its founding in 2017 by Ashley Williams Hogue, M.D., and her husband, Antwan Hogue, M.D., Project Inspire has helped dozens of young people see themselves through a new lens.

Before dinner was served, one of the program’s mentors, Pastor Marvin Charles Lue Jr. from Stewart Memorial CME Church, was asked to bless the meal.

He had something else in mind.

“These young people being exposed to another way of life is the blessing,” he said. “That’s why we are here. The God that I serve allowed us to make it to the finish line with seven young people who are ready to not only change their destiny, but to change the course of the community. These seven young people will be used to bless this world.”

Since 2017, Project Inspire has served the community with a program that provides education, exposure and new experiences for select teens in the youth justice system. The curriculum is administered during a semester and includes trauma-informed training and confidence building, educational and professional development, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and mentorship.

At the beginning of the spring semester, each student was assigned a mentor from the community or USA Health. Those adults attended the graduation ceremony, and each offered inspiring words about the young people they have come to know.

“The more I talk to the kids in Project Inspire, the more inspired I am for our future,” said Antwan Hogue, M.D., Project Inspire co-founder and mentor and an internal medicine physician at USA Health who also serves as medical director of the Johnson Haynes Jr. Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center.

While University Hospital’s Fanny Meisler Trauma Center provides the space for students to explore the health system, many other activities take place in the community highlighting all that Mobile has to offer. During the program, students engage with a diverse group of caring adults that offer a variety of experiences including healthy cooking classes, local college tours, conversations with local entrepreneurs, resumé creation and practice job interviews, Stop the Bleed and Basic Life Support training, suturing and laparoscopic surgery labs, community service projects, and more.

For the spring 2025 semester, the students also visited the Vet Recovery Center in Mobile. They assembled care baskets for the veterans in recovery and wrote letters to former service members in the U.S. military.

During the ceremony, each of the students received certificates of achievement from their mentors. While most hugged and smiled for photos, one graduate decided to address the group.

She stood up slowly from a table, brushed aside her nerves, and walked to the podium. “This program,” she said, “it shows you that you don’t have to live the way you are living. It makes me want to change to better my life.”