‘Building a better Beaufort’: Man aims to improve hometown via a boys program at USCB
Timothy Garvin, 31, admits that he wasn’t the best-behaved student growing up in Beaufort. As an adult, he’s built a program that he hopes will give boys in his hometown an “extra push” and to “show them love.”
Unified Gents, started by Garvin in June, is “like a big brother program” and provides a way for him to give back to his own community, he said.
“I had a hard head when I got to school because I wasn’t under my parents’ supervision,” Garvin said. “I remember being one of those kids and those are the kids that get left behind.”
The classes are free to attend and don’t require signing up. Unified Gents is held every Monday at the University of South Carolina Beaufort for boys from 8 to 18 years old. The program is “up against a lot” when it comes to after-school activities like sports or band practice, Garvin said. Some days, the program has a full class with 10 to 15 boys. Other days, it has three.
Classes began after Garvin created his nonprofit, Unified Beaufort, which was started after he led protests last year in the area following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests, Garvin said, were also a way to honor his friend from high school, Trey Pringle, who died three days after police used a Taser on him multiple times and he was put in a chokehold by a firefighter in 2018. No charges were brought in the 24-year-old’s death, according to previous reporting from the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The protests, he said, “grew bigger” than he ever expected and had him searching for a way to do more.
“What else can I do to help other than gathering people on the side of the street to protest,” Garvin said. “Why would I go to Charleston, or why would I go to Columbia, and protest ... when the stuff that is going on there is happening here?”
When he was young, several community organizations provided mentorship programs, but those places have “faded away” in recent years, he said. Because of this, Garvin feels that young boys in Beaufort don’t have a place that can provide them with guidance, he said, and Unified Gents is a way in which he and volunteers can fill that role.
“I feel like they need that,” Garvin said. “Some kids don’t feel comfortable enough to talk to their parents and tell their parents certain things, but they feel comfortable enough to tell their friends or someone else.”
As someone who grew up in Beaufort, Garvin said, he wants to “make something” of his hometown for his children and have it be a place where people want to stay.
“We’re born here, we went to school here ... We should want to do something to make something,” Garvin said. “Let’s make it better.”
