Mayisha Akbar
Title:
More Than Horseplay
Header:
In Compton, Calif., LMU graduate Mayisha Akbar runs and equestrian center where students learn more than how to ride.
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On an overcast morning in Compton, Calif., behind a short driveway on what resembles any other residential street in sprawling metropolitan Los Angeles, the sounds of fauna fill the air.
Horses neigh and ponies whinny. Cats meow and dogs bark. Sheep bah. . Roosters cock-a-doodle-doo. Only the llama, stately and serene, keeps quiet.
This emotive menagerie, along with a backyard equestrian arena, stables, trailers, parents shoveling manure and children learning how to ride, make up the core components of the Compton Jr. Posse, a youth program that’s the extraordinary brainchild of LMU graduate Mayisha Akbar [BCLA ’75]. Founded in 1994, the Jr. Posse’s dirt-and-hay patch has been an oasis for hundreds of neighborhood kids who saddle up in search of adventure, escape, safe haven and adult attention.
“All the kids look for the same things, “ Akbar says. “They look for acceptance. They look for love. They look for some place to go. And for camaraderie.”
Born in Torrance, Calif., and raised in Harbor city, a Los Angeles neighborhood then filled with dairy farms and strawberry fields, Akbar road neighbors’ horses as a child. She first visited Marymount College in 1970, on an Outward Bound field trip. While attending Marymount and LMU, Akbar studied theater arts and then changed her major to sociology with an emphasis on elementary education.
Akbar learned lessons from LMU’s entrepreneurial programs, reflected today, she says, in the Jr Posse’s student-run, money-making endeavors such as selling art, operating a petting zoo and offering pony rides.
Mostly, though, the Jr. Posse is sustained by donations. Still, Akbar and friends manage to keep the four-legged charges in hay, apples and carrots, as well as transport kids to regional Western- and English-style equestrian competitions. A sponsor once sent a few of the students to Paris.
Whether they are crossing an ocean or cleaning out a horse stall, the Jr. Posse members are certainly wiser for the experiences. “I think we’ve been pretty successful,” Akbar says, “at opening the eyes of a lot of kids who never would have left the community otherwise.”