Yo, what's up everybody?
This is Darryl, DMC McDaniels.
I am co-founder
with Sheila Jaffe of the Felix organization.
(hip hop music)
I grew up in Hollis, Queens, New York.
It was like 1978 when this thing called hip hop came
over the bridge and I became the third member of Run-DMC.
And I'm one of the guys that walked this way in my Adidas,
while telling the world how tricky life could be.
Here I am.
Oh, I had the best family in the world.
I had both parents in my house and my brother.
They were just the most guiding,
loving,
caring
disciplining parents that any kid can ask for.
So at age 35, I found out that I was adopted.
Shocking, traumatic revelation.
My childhood was complicated.
It was great until I turned 11
and I found out I was adopted and it kind of, you know
pulled the rug out from underneath me.
There was no pride in being adopted.
It was kind of a negative.
All of these questions.
Why did my birth mother gimme up? This and that?
That means there's this other lady, and other father.
Like it was, it destroyed me,
because it hit me with a lot of these whys.
And all that did to me was this, it made me feel
all alone.
I went out to dinner with a friend and he said,
"Wait a second, do you know Darryl McDaniels? Run-DMC?"
And I said, "No".
And he said, "Okay, you have to meet him,
because he was just in my office last week
and he found out he was adopted at 35".
When I sat down with Sheila, the most incredible healing
thing to me was this...
Oh wow! Another adopted person just like me.
So I am not alone, and there's probably a whole lot of us.
We bonded, like it was the first time
either one of us were really talking about being adopted
and talking to another adoptee
and finding so many similarities.
So out of these unfortunate events
and this one unplanned meeting ,
just to unite two so-called lost souls
came the Felix organization 16 years ago.
(upbeat music)
We wanted to do something
for the kids who were less fortunate than we were,
and didn't get taken home and didn't have parents.
So the Felix organization takes the kids
in foster care puts them around other kids
like them so that they see that, oh, I'm not alone.
There are so many of us like me
and we can thrive and we can be successful.
And we are actually normal children.
I think our first camp started with like 75 kids
and then we just ballooned to almost 200 or 250 a year.
Now we're opening up camps for the LBGTQ community.
We opened up camps for the older kids.
The goal is to work with as many children as we can
in foster care.
They meet new friends, they open up, they start trusting.
They know we're gonna be there next year and the year after.
So they believe in us and the trust becomes palpable.
When you give a child, regardless of their situation,
no matter how dire or unfortunate or traumatic it could be,
when you give them that opportunity to participate
to recreate, to educate themselves...
Here's a great rap, rhyme.
They don't just do well.
Those children excel.
That's the change they'll receive.
(audience applauding)
Your producer Erin today, did a great job.
She asked our friends at Flintstone Vitamins
if they wanted to help you guys out
and they are donating $7,500 to your program.
(audience cheering)
Oh my goodness, wow!
To help you achieve your goals.
Oh my goodness!
That's a good thing.
That's amazing!
Flinstone Vitamins! Thank you so much,
to Darryl and Sheila, good people,
good people doing good work!
(audience cheering)