St. Pete man empowers youth with outdoor adventures: 'You can be on Cloud Nine'

Non-profit introduces children to outdoors

Mark Wilson reports

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A St. Petersburg man is taking his passion to his community to help the next generation, exposing them to the great outdoors for nearly 10 years with great success, and he credits someone close to him for the inspiration.

"I'm trying to keep them active and teach some life lessons," Jovan McNeill said with an energetic smile.

FOX 13 joined him recently on a warm summer morning at Lake Vista in South St. Pete, where McNeill took a dozen inner city youth fishing for the first time. The only phone allowed is his, which captured their first catches.

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"It's huge to have it where it's just that – them in that moment with nature – experiencing something for the first time," McNeill said.

He started the non-profit Cloud Nine Outdoors in 2015.

"I like to say it's where mentorship and education meets the outdoors," he said. "So, you can be on cloud nine."

And, the youngsters clearly enjoyed it. Laughing, oohing and ahhh-ing when McNeill opened a bag of live earthworms and showed them how to bait their hooks. It took some coaxing for a few to even touch them, but once they did – the fish started coming.

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Before lunch, every youngster had hooked a fish.

Nikki Gaskin-Capehart, with the Pinellas County Urban League, has partnered with Cloud Nine to help provide the opportunity to youngsters.

"This is important to young people," Gaskin-Capehart said. "Not just to learn how to fish, but how to connect to new mentors."

The youth on this particular trip are all members of the Urban League's "Nu-lites Program," which exposes them to workforce opportunities, entrepreneurship and what they call "dedicated mentoring."

"It's important, so our youth can take that connection and have a relationship that they can always nurture and learn from," she said.

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Mentorship is a big part of Cloud Nine's focus. DeShawn Harrell was McNeill's first youngster he took fishing nine years ago. Nine years later, he's helping bait hooks and catch fish. The mentee has become a mentor himself.

"It keeps you out of trouble," Harrell said. "It's great to come back, and it's good to help other kids fish and learn."

Cloud Nine Outdoors is also getting the attention of valuable sponsors like attorney Wil Flores. He was giving away about 100 fishing poles on Facebook and McNeill reached out immediately.

"So we connected, we now give all the kids a new fishing pole and in five years we've helped a lot of people," Flores said.

Cloud Nine Outdoors provides camping, archery, boating and swimming trips as well. They also mentor children through the school until they graduate and even offer stipends for P-Tech or college.

All started when McNeill could barely walk and his mother, Tonya Randolph, who was a single parent, put a fishing pole in his hand. They still often fish together, either at Cloud Nine events or just by themselves.

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"Just the time we spend together talking and relaxing and bonding," Randolph said. "It's the best."

Both are clearly hooked on the joy of being outdoors as much as they enjoy being hooked together.

For more information on Cloud Nine Outdoors, click here to visit their website.

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