By admin 
The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our gala at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Grand Sheraton in downtown Sacramento. Buy tickets at sacramentochangemakers.com.
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For the first 17 years of his life, Derrell Roberts, 67, lived in the St. Bernard Projects in New Orleans’ 7th Ward.
Although the housing complex was demolished after Hurricane Katrina, Roberts begins his story there.
The second-oldest child of six siblings, Roberts belonged to the second family of the three his father would have. Stretched across three apartments, they were cared for by his late mother, a “family person by nature.”
“I always had a house full,” he said. “Family has always meant a lot to me.”
At 17, Roberts bid goodbye to New Orleans for California, where he attended Crenshaw High School, Chapman University and the University of Southern California. He first arrived in Sacramento 43 years ago for a graduate school assignment.
He never left. And since then, he’s become a community pillar in North Sacramento.
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Twenty-five years ago Roberts, along with his wife — a specialist in prenatal care and mental health — founded the organization that cemented his position in the community: the Roberts Family Development Center. Drawing on his commitment to family, youth development and violence prevention, and a member of the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools network, the center provides holistic support and educational opportunities for young people and their families.
“We support them, we love them,” Roberts said. “We try to create a safe environment for them.”
Roberts’ service extends even further than the center. Roberts took over organizing the annual North Sacramento-Del Paso Heights Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. March, and championed park clean-ups to create the “neighborhoods that we think our kids deserve, our neighbors deserve, our seniors deserve.”
Yet he downplays his role, crediting family, friends and community leaders who came before him.
“You can be a great leader if you surround yourself with great people,” he said. “My intentions are, in many ways, caring about people.”
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