What is No Gray Areas? Salvation to those that need a helping hand badly in rough times. No Gray Areas was founded by Reshanda Gray and it’s a way for her save lives, enrich souls.
I learned per a Nike-published study awhile back that young women are 50% less likely to drop out of school or be teenage pregnant mothers if they have a structured activity before entering junior high.
50 freaking percent people!
The bread Reshanda gets from donations saves actual lives. I feel her organization is as important as The Make a Wish Foundation so I will donate to no one other than R-Gray. She is the realest of real ones I know.
Reshanda beat the odds and made it to Cal Berkeley from Washington Prep High in South LA, then earned her way to the LA Sparks. But she’s more than a baller, she’s an angel who dropped down to Earth just doing good works for people.
She empowers women like I’ve never seen before. Peep the video below, you’ll see.
In it she really bears her soul, her heart. She talks of how her folks used drugs, how she lived in a one bedroom apartment with many family members, but how others lifted her up, helped her get out.
Me? E-Woods? That inspired me big-time.
Reshanda gives me courage to also share that all my relatives have killed themselves because of crack cocaine addiction, of heroine overdose, of meth. Me? I’ve never once taken drugs; I’m addicted to helping people and I’m about the last of the Woods’ line.
Reshanda Gray has prayed on the phone for and with me and helped me find Jesus. Don’t you think I love her for that?
Reshanda’s message is deep. She humbly requests others to donate and to join her to help save and transform lives. So please consider supporting her.
Me, E-Woods, I went to teach at 36th and Vermont. I volunteered with Derrick Daniels in 96’ at The Challengers Club and mentored a boy named Obie. I kept in touch with him, prayed day and night he would do right.
But it doesn’t always go right, kids you become attached to sometimes become a statistic. Obie went to prison and I cried for many nights that I couldn’t save him, but I tried.
I think Reshanda is trying to tell people through No Gray Areas to support the cause, to be a mentor, to be a part of a kid’s life. Donate yeah, but help the best way we can to be a positive link in their chain, feel me? That’s not much to ask is it?
Reshanda? Like I said she’s an angel. Maybe she’s made of flesh, but more likely made of stardust.
She’s like Kobe, who Reshanda met when he was just starting out, a young kid himself. She drew inspiration from him then and further when Kobe became The Mamba: full circle. 100.
Reshanda is awoke, as enlightened a soul as I know. No higher compliment can I give, I salute salute her. Like our guy Pooh Jeter would say, fist up!
I grew up on the easy streets of Ventura County but I chose to teach in Reshanda’s neighborhood. Some may say it’s tough there like in the Jay-Z rap song Hard Knock Life: “It's a hard-knock life for us It's a hard-knock life for us
‘Stead of treated
We get tricked
‘Stead of kisses
We get kicked
It’s the hard-knock life”
But me, E-Woods, I feel more comfortable in South Central LA because there people are real, no fake industry stuff. I need to go down to R-Gray’s beauty salon and get my hair done in South LA. And I don’t even have hair, lol.
I also need to go back to The Slauson Rec Center where they play real ball. Yeah there’s heaters and 40’s but that’s real, where the most beautiful of roses grow through the harshest of concrete cracks.
As Tupac world say,
“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.”
Reshanda Gray is the ultimate velvety red rose that should’ve never made it but it could never be stopped because she was supported. Just like she is trying to change lives with her No Gray Areas. Can you the reader support her, please?
She stays in the hood as K.Dot says to “Pimp a Butterfly.” I’m in awe of her.
Me, I graduated Ventura High in 89’, went down to South LA and I tried to help a young man named Nick Young, who would later come to be known as Swaggy P. Maybe I was following the No Gray Areas’ philosophy in 2004.
Can you help empower young sisters and young brothers to grow and thrive? How much can you donate to improve a life? I’m not even talking of monetarily giving. Can you just give of your heart, can you become a big brother or sister of America?
My father Randy didn’t have a dad, he had a big Brother of America. It makes a difference people. No Gray Areas has a tremendous cadre of fantastical ideas; its mission statement is off the charts. It’s touching.
I suggest you see the video links, that’s why I’m trying to keep this story short. I talk too much anyway, E-Woods, blah, blah, blah.
But I’ll leave you with this, I give away a lot of my personal size 13 kicks all the time. To this sweet caring girl, she’s 6-4 from Lynwood High, I gave her my Jordan 6 Cigars, rare J 1s. I need to remind her to join No Gray Areas.
A second girl I gave kicks to is also 6-4, she trains with Olin and wears a size 13. She’s going to play with Stanford. I give away a lot of my foamposite kicks out of my closet.
I’m going to start selling my kicks from now on, donate that money to No Gray Areas, send the bread anonymously to them, that’s the best place I can find.
That will be one of the best things I’ve ever done on this earth, to support Reshanda, who goes out to speak to kids at schools with our guy, trainer supreme Olin Simplis. They help so many, they transform and changes lives.
When I was 14 in 1985, me as a freshman at Ventura High, that dope LA Laker and NBA Sun Cedric Ceballos came to me to teach me how to dunk in 6th period conditioning. He was only 6th man off the bench at the time for Compton Dominguez high school. I picked him to be on my team, he picked me to be on his squad. I learned to love hoop.
Ced was balling for 38 ppg at Ventura College before playing at Fullerton and I thought knowing Ced would be the most I’d ever be inspired through basketball. Nope. It’s actually Reshanda Gray, far more inspiring, miles more inspiring than I am inspired by Ced.
I’m so inspired because of her personality, her No Gray Areas, just watching her ball on TV, watching her grind in sessions at Olin’s. I took a photo with her once and I take photos with really no one, ever. I had a SLAM jersey made for her, she’s a mentor for our SLAM mentor group.
So fashionable, intelligent, and articulate Ms Gray’s beauty does become. I’m having a jersey made for myself, authentic orange and blue New York Knick’s base, but it’ll say R-Gray on the back. It’ll hopefully spark a convo to talk about No Gray Areas when I often go to youth AAU tourneys.
These convos? I will tell people of R-Gray. She is more cold than any that have played in the NYC, and I’ve known a grip. I’ll wear that jersey with so, so much pride.
In conclusion, I never usually do this type of story (to ask for support), but it’s really a story of love, of hope, of your opportunity to help the next generation through this worthy organization, can you feel that?
Go to their website: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/nograyareas to donate.
Reshanda Gray is love, she is made out of Star Dust, peep the vid, figure it out for yourself, meet her, feel her vibe which is the strongest vibe I’ve ever known.
To close, here is Reshanda’s crazy fun vid on her LA Sparks Press Day. See it and you’ll feel her energy for ages!
