BALTIMORE — On New Year's Eve, Damion Cooper stood on the home field of the Baltimore Ravens before the team's blowout win against the Dolphins, presented with two big tickets: He's going to the Super Bowl.
"I think I showed every single tooth in my mouth that day," Cooper recalled.
Cooper is the Ravens' Inspire Change Changemaker, part of the NFL's efforts to forward social justice and positive change.
The path that led him to lead the organization: unforgettable.
A man shot Cooper on his way home in 1992, just above his heart. Cooper would later meet that man, learning his story while working in a prison in 2005. Years later, Project Pneuma was born.
The goal of the project is to "breathe new life, holistically, into the young men we serve, by challenging them intellectually, strengthening them physically, nurturing them emotionally and uplifting them spiritually," Cooper explained.
Cooper's goal is for boys in their first stage of adolescence to feel comfortable with their emotions, and to understand them, during a period of major social and emotional change. The group also works with incoming police recruits to build better community relations from the start.
"If we can get to them at this early stage," Cooper said, "and we can actually get to these officers before they get a gun and badge, and we bring them together and they grow together, things become better and that's the pathway to wholeness."
In addition to Super Bowl tickets, Project Pneuma is getting a $10,000 donation from the NFL Foundation
"This money," Cooper explained, "will help us fund additional courageous conversations, marketing materials that we can actually help to build Baltimore better, and as we begin to scale outside of Baltimore, to show the work we're doing here as a national model of what true police reform can look like between boys and men of color and youth engagement."
Cooper is looking to expand his work to other cities in America.
As for the big game itself, Cooper is pulling for the team in purple.
"I'm affirming right now, my mind, that we're going," Cooper laughed.
