Heart & Sole: How photographer Jamal Burger is changing the narrative for kids in marginalized communities
December 2021
Photo: The Kickback
TORONTO – Late in the evening on December 4, commercial lights shine through store windows on Queen Street West and Ossington Avenue. Up the street of Ossington, light peers from a doorway, just barely illuminating an A-frame sidewalk sign, making out the faint images of 20 sneakers.
Through the doorway, a generous case of stairs leads to an apartment-duplex turned immersive gallery to showcase a year’s work of The Kickback’s mentors and mentees.
On one wall, a collage is formed out of photographs taken by a mix of professional and amateur photographers in the city. The images, both grayscale and rich-coloured, capture everything from dancers and athletes, the smile of a young child to a pair of Air Jordan sneakers. Across the mural, sneakers dangle from two basketball nets drilled into the wall — the kind of net and backboard you find in your school playground or local park.
At the room’s corner, a mountain of sneakers spills from an open closet, and each pair was donated by the event’s passersby.
Down the hall, the sidewalk sign comes to life. Sixty-two books about sports, photography, art, and history form shelves displaying classic and coveted sneaker silhouettes. The event, The Gallery, is raffling off the shoes to help fund the organization’s youth programming for next year, and they all belonged to The Kickback’s founder Jamal Burger.
Burger sits on a bench in a dimly lit room separated fromt the event by a curtain. Behind him, a projector casts a video documentary on the wall. The video rolls clips from campaign shoots to local sneaker donation drives, documents The Kickback’s memorable moments.
The Kickback was born out of Burger’s fascination with the culture surrounding sneakers and a desire to give back to the community that raised him. For some, a pair of sneakers carry the responsibility of protecting and comforting the feet. For people like Burger and the youth that The Kickback supports, it means much more — sneakers are a catalyst for confidence and a sign of hope for underserved youth.
Growing up, Burger lived in Toronto’s Regent Park, a neighbourhood classified as a low-income by the City. As a Black, inner-city kid fighting socioeconomic barriers, growing up was challenging for Burger. His family couldn’t afford the tools or supplies, nor the shoes, that allowed him to confidently participate in school activities as a kid, like playing his favourite sport.
“I remembered what it was like being a kid and not having shoes for basketball or for school,” says Burger. “When I was a kid, the way I'd go about getting sneakers wasn't the best way of doing so because I would get in trouble stealing stuff.” He always had a fascination with sports, basketball, and sneakers, but his upbringing left him with little opportunity to express it. As a kid, he would try to pull out Slam, an American basketball magazine, during silent reading time before his teacher told him to pick out a “real” book.
Today, Burger is a successful photographer who went from reading Slam in his elementary school classroom to photographing then-Toronto Raptor Demar DeRozan for the magazine’s March 2018 issue. He shoots NBA games, directs Nike campaigns, and founded TierZero, a Toronto-based production company.
Photo: Slam Magazine, 2018.
Despite his success, he remembers being a kid and feeling like these opportunities were far out of reach.
“When I was 23, I was working as a photographer, and brands were sending me a lot of sneakers,” says Burger. “I just felt like they were giving them to the wrong person.”
Gary Ochi, the founder of local streetwear and sneaker boutique Livestock, believed in Burger’s dream of becoming a photographer. He bought Burger his first camera in exchange of working as the company’s photographer for a year.
“After the year, Gary came back to me and said, ‘Well, if you're happy that I got you a camera, when you can give back, give back.’,” says Burger. “I didn't know what it meant, but he took me out of my situation by giving me a camera. I just really tried to multiply that experience by giving away sneakers.”
In The Kickback’s first year, Burger hosted a sneaker drive in Regent Park to donate shoes he collected from brand deals and donations. With no set plan about how this word-of-mouth event would go, Burger made his way down neighbourhood of Regent Park. With a heavy bag of sneakers in one hand, and his bicycle handle in the other, he raced behind the Uber driver that brought the rest of the sneakers down to the event.
Burger’s naivety prompted a change in his approach to community initiatives. Yes, donating sneakers to children is a kindhearted gesture, but the sneaker itself won’t provide lasting changes to a child’s mindset or confidence. Burger dreamt of being able to provide kids in underserved communities the resources, programs and educational opportunities that he wished for growing up, but he didn’t know where to start.
“He’s a dreamer. A big dreamer. He pushes you to make those dreams possible and even dream big yourself. He has a special skill of connecting people and then seeing what they're strong at, and really tapping into that,” says Dez Bailey, Burger’s girlfriend, The Kickback volunteer and founder of a women-led organization called The Patchwork Collective. Bailey and Burger met in 2018 when he was collecting shoes for a sneaker drive in the St. Jamestown community. They bonded over their shared passion to help children in struggling communities. “He’ll take what you’re good at and really help you expand in that area.”
Burger reached out to his old college friend and “right-hand man” Christian Epistola, a University of Toronto grad who works in community outreach and programming for youth for the City of Toronto. Burger knew that Epistola was the person to make The Kickback the community resource he envisioned it to be, connecting Epistola with an opportunity to help it grow.
Epistola grew up in St. Jamestown, another low-income neighbourhood in the city, and the two bonded over their admiration for sports and sneakers (Epistola even bought his first pair of Air Jordan sneakers from Burger). But the most defining characteristic of their relationship? They share a vision to provide kids with the opportunities and mentorship to help them maintain their self-confidence and positive mindset, even in the most challenging circumstances.
There is narrative that residents in low-income urban communities are less likely to embrace ideas of success, no less strive to achieve it. However, in a 2004 study, Sandra L. Barnes, a Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, argues the opposite. The residents of underserved communities embrace the ideas of success beyond their lived experiences, but require the right mentorship and community activism to achieve it. Burger and Epistola had neither growing up, and planned their community outreach in a way that focuses on the origin of The Kickback and the needs of underserved communities.
“Everything is stemmed from the sneaker, that's the reason why we tap into the spaces of sports media and art, because we feel like that is essentially the common denominator in these spaces,” says Epistola. “When you’re growing up and playing a certain sport, you would need access to a sneaker, and when you wear the right sneaker it instills some sort of confidence in you.”
With the vast network of media professionals that Burger grew during his time as a photographer, Burger and Epistola created a mentorship program that allows youth to venture into different fields related to sports, media and art, giving them an opportunity to explore what sparks their interests. They also host local basketball games, marathons, and more to give kids in the city a space to build relationships, stay active and discover their passion.
“Our mission statement now is to empower underserved youth to think outside of their lived experience, one sole at a time,” says Burger.
Jamal Omar, a third-year marketing student at York University, was one of the adolescents who discovered their passion and skills in photography through The Kickback’s programming. Omar grew up in Jane-Finch, another of the Toronto’s low-income neighbourhoods long plagued by stigma and discrimination. Omar loves sports and often took photos of his friends on his smartphone as kid. He recognized Burger at a Nike event in 2018, approached him and said, “I do photography. You do photography. How do I get like you?’”
Burger invited Omar to The Run Club program, a weekly 3-kilometre run for kids in the St. Jamestown community in downtown Toronto held every Sunday. Despite the lengthy commute from Omar’s home, he went anyway.
Burger helped Omar grow his skills in photography by inviting him on street photography sessions or shadowing him during professional gigs, while Epistola maintained the relationship between Omar and The Kickback. Burger and Epistola gifted Omar with a pair of Air Jordan Concord 11s in his senior year of high school. On graduation day, Omar wore the sneakers to express gratitude to The Kickback and its founders.
On Dec. 5, 2021, Omar fulfilled one of his biggest goals of photographing an NBA game, thanks to the connections of Burger and Epistola, their eagerness to help Omar grow, but more importantly, Omar’s photography skills. In a text to Burger and Epistola, Omar thanked them for being positive male role models in his life. “I look up to them both equally. If I could be half the person that Jamal and Christian are, then I know I made it.”
Photo: Jamal Omar via Instagram.
During the ten days that The Gallery was running, many of Omar’s photos were highlighted in the heart-shaped mural on the wall. “[Jamal Omar] has such an inquiring mind and is truly interested in what we’re trying to create,” says Epistola. “My heart gets really heavy, and it shows me that what we're doing is real.”
Omar isn’t the only kid whose talents are showcased at this event. Every aspect of The Gallery — from event planning to the interior design to the art woven throughout — is a product of The Kickback’s talented youth, and it showcased and celebrated each one.
Burger, Epistola and The Kickback has expanded their work across borders in areas like New York, Oakland and Panama to provide underserved communities with programming tailored to the needs of their youth. The Kickback and their founders continue to make strides in community outreach and youth programming, but they aren’t strangers to the systemic issues that continue to negatively impact young people in marginalized and underserved communities today.
“Even with all the help in the world from schools, hospitals and boards, the government is still bigger than anything that we can do,” says Burger. “We can still lose kids.”
Burger and Epistola set this fear aside knowing that The Kickback is creating a positive impact in the lives of the kids in their communities. “Our hope is that are going to create a positive impact a lot earlier in their lives so that it continuously trickles down,” says Espistola. “We’re here to try and inspire and encourage youth in our communities to be themselves and love who they are, because if it’s not us, then who?”
