When Hamza Abdul first walked into the Gerald and Darlene Jordan Club of Chelsea, he was just seven years old, having arrived from Somalia a couple of years earlier and speaking only a few words of English. He didn’t know it yet, but that Club would change his life.
“My cousins were already going to the Club,” Hamza remembers. “I just followed them around at first. I didn’t understand anything, the language, the culture. But the staff found ways to include me. Even just drawing or playing basketball, they made me feel like I belonged.”
Those early experiences shaped Hamza’s journey, providing more than just after-school activities. They offered connection, personal growth, and opportunity at a time when his world was in transition.
Raised by his older sister after losing his mother in Somalia, Hamza’s world was tightly protected. School, home, and the Club were his entire universe. But inside those walls, opportunity flourished. He discovered basketball, made lifelong friends, and learned critical thinking skills: how to ask for help, how to build a resume, how to believe in his own future.
“The Club gave me what school couldn’t always give me…life skills,” Hamza says. “They helped me land my first internship at Dana-Farber, taught me how to ride the T, how to interview for jobs. They opened up the world.”
Even after high school, Hamza kept coming back. Every summer, he worked at the Club, first as a summer counselor, and eventually as a teen program director. The staff continued to see potential in him, often before he saw it himself. “They always believed in me,” he says. “They encouraged me to take on leadership roles, even before I was ready.”
After earning his degree from UMass Boston and coaching track and field, Hamza found himself at a crossroads. He was searching for a way to combine his love of coaching, mentorship, and youth development into a career.
Enter CareerLabs.
CareerLabs, a new initiative from Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston (BGCB), offers 18- to 24-year-old alumni personalized career coaching, mentorship, professional networking, and real-world support. When Hamza learned about the opportunity, it felt like fate.
“When I heard about CareerLabs, it felt like someone had taken everything I loved coaching, mentorship, helping young people and built a job around it,” Hamza says. “It wasn’t just a job. It was my purpose.”
Today, as a CareerLabs Coach, Hamza assists BGCB alumni as they explore job and career paths they would like to pursue. Through individualized coaching, connections to resources and mentors, and work-based opportunities including job shadows and internships, alumni continue to build skills and create a plan for their future.
“We’re here to remind BGCB alumni of their strengths, to help them see what they already carry within themselves,” Hamza emphasizes. “Sometimes you just need someone to believe in you and show you the way.”
For Hamza, every coaching session is personal. Every young person he meets reminds him of who he was a kid with dreams bigger than his circumstances.
“I think about how staff at the Club never gave up on me,” he says. “Now it’s my turn. Now I get to be that voice for someone else.”
Learn more about how CareerLabs is helping BGCB alumni write their next chapter. Email Hamza habdul@bgcb.org
