Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

As homeschooling becomes more popular in the African-American community, black homeschoolers are going to need more support. Mike Smith talks with the co-founder of one group designed to meet the needs of black homeschoolers on today's Home School Heartbeat.

Mike Smith:
It's a real privilege to have Eric Burges with us today. Eric, how did you and Joyce get started with the National Black Home Educators Resource Association, and what are your goals for the future?


Eric Burges:
Well, it began as an idea. As Joyce and I have had the opportunity to serve in the past as president of the homeschool organization in the state of Louisiana, we noticed that we didn't have a lot of black participation on a state level, and even as we traveled nationally. Every so often we would meet a black family, and we knew they were out there. So I came up with the idea that as soon as I would leave the presidency of the state organization, that I would do something to try to reach out to black families and provide a resource for them. And God has blessed us tremendously. And our goals are particularly to educate the African-American public, to let them know that homeschooling is a viable means of education, to support them, and actually to put a black face on home education so that they can show their families that there are black families that do this -- because when we had started this movement of home education at our house my parents felt like there were no other black people anywhere that did anything like this and we didn't have anybody to point to. But now all they have to do is nbhera.org and click there, and there are people that are African-Americans that are homeschooling.