Venni Dunbar is a stand-up comic, a television and movie actor, and a poet.
To many neighborhood children, he also is a friend.
Dunbar works with children at Dan D. Rogers Elementary and the East Dallas YMCA, many of whom come from low-income and single parent families.
“A lot of little kids don’t have a male figure around,” says Dunbar, who lives near Rogers.
“The most important thing I give to these kids is attention and understanding. A lot of them go home at three o’clock and there is no one there. They don’t have anyone to get a hug from.”
At the Y, Dunbar coaches sports teams and directs summer camp. He also directs the Y’s after-school site at Rogers. During the school day, he tutors fifth and sixth graders at Rogers in math and English, teaches stage crew to students interested in theater and helps with disciplinary problems.
He came to the Y seven years ago and to the school six years ago as a volunteer. Both organizations soon created paid positions for him.
“He’s an excellent role model, as a person, as a man and as an African-American,” says Rogers Principal Rex Cole.
“He works on the students’ academic skills, but at the same time he works on their self confidence. They’ll tell him anything.”
Dunbar volunteered because he needed something to do with his weekdays, he says. He was performing in comedy clubs under the name of Godfather Venni in California, New York, Arizona and Texas on the weekends, but he didn’t have a nine-to-five job. Now, he often works from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., he says.
His life goal has been to open a home for wayward boys. Dunbar decided to go into the entertainment business to make the big money needed to operate a boy’s home, he says.
He was a court reporter for the Dallas juvenile system when he first tried his hand at improve. Since then, he has appeared on ABC’s television shows “Perfect Strangers,” Tequila & Bonetti,” and “America’s Funniest People,” as well as on Black Entertainment Television. He also played a blind man in Oliver Stone’s movie “Born on the Fourth of July.”
Dunbar says he still plans to open a boy’s home someday, but he’s happy for now working at Rogers and the Y.
He is currently promoting his book of poems entitled “Poetry from My Roots: A Black Man’s Perspective,” which will be published this fall by Vantage Press.
The book explores the gang pressures, poverty and lack of positive male role models in the inner-city and how these circumstances affect children.
“Children are an endangered species,” Dunbar says. “A lot of our kids in the inner cities are defeated before they even get started. A lot of people can’t get through to children, but for some reason I get through to all of them.
“I’m hoping when the kids look back, they can say there have been a couple of people who have really cared about them. I hope to be remembered in that way.”
