Columnist, entrepreneur, 2008 Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn and the author of 10 titles, Kevin Powell is coming to Bermuda to help steer the Island's young men in the right direction.

And he's going to be taking his message onto the streets from the barber shop to the Caribbean food restaurants.

Mr. Powell, author of 'The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life', will be a panellist at the Epsilon Theta Lambda Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. 'Boys to Men Symposium' a free event, at St. Paul's AME Church Hall tomorrow evening, and the keynote speaker during the fraternity's Annual Gold & Black Ball at the Fairmont Southampton on Saturday. This year's theme is Investing in Our Future and the Fraternity.

Over the years, Mr. Powell has written for the Washington Post, Newsweek, Essence, Ebony, Esquire and Vibe, where he was a senior writer for several years.

He routinely does college, corporate and community lectures nationwide, and is a frequent presence on television and radio offering his commentary on a range of issues. Last Thursday he was a guest on Oprah where he talked about being a reformed abuser. He admitted he was abusive to women and sought counselling and for the past 18 years, he's been working with men across the country to end violence against women.

When asked about his influences and how he got out of a life of hardship, his first answer was God, and his second was his mother, Shirley Mae Powell.

"We were poor financially not intellectually," he said. "I wouldn't trade that kind of hardship, you learn to make do with what you have."

Although he faced harsh circumstances, Mr. Powell studied at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and has become one of the most prolific and respected writers and leaders of his generation.

He said: "In spite of working on my 10th book and owning several businesses and property, my heart is with the poor people or the working class."

Whilst growing up in Jersey City, he saw many of his friends get incarcerated or die and that helped to drive him to reach out to young people.

He began writing when he was about 11-years-old and his aim was to be a fiction writer. He read Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe and by the time he was 20, he was writing professionally in New York City. Since the publication of 'The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life' it has been nominated for a 2009 NAACP Image Award.

"It was written in a way that was really simple and accessible, because think about the songs of Bob Marley and the poems of Langston Hughes, they were saying really profound things, but they kept it in really simple language and that is what we wanted to do, so if you are 12 or 22, 42 or 52, it speaks to you.

"And at the end of each essay, even if you don't want to read the entire essay, the essays are summarised with basic bullet points and that was on purpose.

"I think that one of differences between the black male community and the black female community is that women and girls talk in ways that men and boys don't talk. So this book is about, how we can develop as whole human beings? And in spite of all the 'isms' out there, how can we win? Because we know how to survive, but do we want to win. I got an e-mail last week from a 12-year-old boy who said, 'I don't have a father, so this book has become like my father'." To the suggestion that he might be preaching to the choir, in that many who are impoverished almost certainly aren't avid readers, he said: "I definitely don't feel like I am preaching to the choir, I think, yes, there are a lot of like-minded people out there who will say yes, 'I get it, Black Male Handbook.'

"But that's why when I get to Bermuda, not only will I be speaking to my Fraternity's Ball on Saturday, where the elite of Bermuda will be, but on Thursday and Friday, I will make it a point to go into the barber shop, to go into the Caribbean food restaurants and what we call the ghetto. You go where the people are."

Regarding what he does for those in his own neighbourhood, he said: "We do a lot of work in the projects, we go right in there with the book and often times we will give away free copies and have workshops with the men, because you have to meet people where they are.

"I think of Franz Fanon's quote, 'You go where the people are and then you fashion what a movement should look like', and so we take that work seriously.

"You can't be afraid of the people you are trying to help. Like I play basketball religiously, I love sports, and so I will be on the basketball court just talking to the young men and end up by mentoring some of them, just based on those conversations.

"So our entry point may have been sports, but then it becomes a bigger conversation about manhood and what we should be doing about our lives."

He then called on the black male community to become mentors. "The other thing too, I'm not sure if it is a big word there in Bermuda, but in America, the word mentoring is thrown around a lot," he said. "So with all due respect, we're asking professional black males, successful black males, because one of the problems is that so many of us are missing in action in our communities somehow.

"This is a global problem, I was just in Jamaica for two weeks in December and to see all these young black men out there I felt like I was back in Brooklyn.

"And you will hear some of the older males saying they are just hoodlums, they're thugs, and I say, 'if someone had said that about Bob Marley, we would have never gotten all that music, and if someone had did that to Malcolm X he would never have become the Malcolm X that we knew, he would have just lingered in those prisons for the rest of his life'.

"Part of the challenge is that we have got to begin to have males coming out into those communities to relate to these boys, you don't have to be from a ghetto environment, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't from a ghetto environment. He was born into the black elite in Atlanta and he had a PhD by the time he was 26, by 34 he was a Nobel Peace Prize winner."

When asked if his future hopes included the White House, he answered: "I am absolutely in love with public service, this is my life calling, so I cannot imagine not helping people in some form or fashion for the rest of my life. So if that means running for Congress next year in New York, I will certainly be doing that.

"But I should be clear that I have no desire to be a career politician, I prefer the term public servant and at different points you simply board different vessels to help people to go from point A to point B. I'm about building institutions and helping to develop communities, because I have lived in different kinds of neighbourhoods and so I have seen what it is like to be in a community that has lots of resources and being in a community that does not. If you have more resources, you have more life options, you begin to feel that you have life and when don't you begin to embrace all manners of death and that is what we have to begin to move people away from."

He added: "So public service to me means no matter what your title is, because that comes and goes, 'what are you doing to reflect God and to empower people so that they can become self-empowered?' I would ask the question, 'do you love and respect yourself? And then, 'do you want to win or do you just want to survive? And then I know what the answer would be, as they would say, 'well I want to win!'

"Surviving means just sitting on that wall watching life passing you by from day-to-day, figuring out what you will eat from day-to day, paying a bill here or there, this month, next month.

"But winning means that you have a vision for your life that you are dreaming of something five or 10 years from now.

"For example, when I was a child my mother had a grade school education, she was born and raised in the American south, and you know what was going on in America back then, when many of our black people were denied a full education.

"My grandparents were illiterate and that is the world that I was born into and by all reasons of sanity I should not be on this phone call with you right now.

"What allowed me to be where I am today is that I dreamed of other worlds, and it came because of my love of education – I've got to keep coming back to this – I say to young men that you have to take education seriously and I am not just talking about going to school, knowledge should be as natural to you as breathing for the rest of your life.

"No young man in Bermuda can tell me that I don't understand, because I came from the same background as many of you. I have been there and seen it all!" Tickets $125, or information can be obtained from Diallo Rabain or from Brother Michael Wellman at 441-599-1906 or e-mail info@bermudaalpha.bm or visit www.bermudaalpha.bm. The Epsilon Theta Lambda Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Annual Black and Gold Ball is formal Black Tie and it takes place at 6 p.m. at the Fairmont Southampton.