By Mark Eckel|Engagement Insider
Everywhere he’s been from Piscataway, N.J. to Columbus, Ohio to New Orleans to Philadelphia, Malcolm Jenkins leaves his mark.
The veteran safety who grew up in Piscataway, played his college ball at Ohio State and spent five years with the Saints before leaving as a free agent, believes in giving back.
“All the places that have impacted me, I want to make an impact,’’ Jenkins said. “My high school, my college, both NFL cities, I want to make an impact. If you go somewhere and leave and no one knew you were there you’re kind of wasting your time.’’
Jenkins wasted no time in helping his newest city, Philadelphia. After signing a new deal with the Eagles as a free agent last March he was helping the community in July before the start of training camp.
“Once we got to Philly I wanted to do something here,’’ Jenkins said. “We got something together really quick. We partnered with Feed the Children and we were able to feed and clothe over 3,000 people.
“We’re going to do the same thing in Columbus during our bye week.’’
It all started when Jenkins got to New Orleans as a first-round draft pick of the Saints out of Ohio State in 2009.
“When I was in New Orleans my first year I did a lot of things in the community that the Saints organized, stuff in the schools, visiting different elementary schools, things like that,’’ Jenkins said. My second year my mom and I sat down and wanted to focus our effort into one main goal, one main direction. So we started the Malcolm Jenkins Foundation in 2010.
“We started in New Orleans with a project we called Project Rewards, in partnership with the Urban League. It’s an after school program where they provide academic support, SAT prep, ACT prep, training, tutoring, they have a whole curriculum that kids can pick from.
“What we brought in were the life skills part of it. They have a chance to take our Project Rewards course. We have leaders in the community come in and give them advice on confidence building, health and wellness, and all of that to balance out the education side.’’
Helping young kids continued when the Foundation went back to Jenkins’ home town of Piscataway and held a free football camp for kids from ages 7 to 17. The camp was held at his old high school where his former coaches came out to help along with some of his NFL friends.
In two years he’s provided a free camp for close to 700 kids.
“Growing up, my dad was the guy who took everyone to practice, the one who signed everyone up for the team,’’ Jenkins said. “Seeing him do all of that, it was just the way I was brought up. Now I’m in the position to make change, so it just kind of came natural to me.’’
So has Jenkins latest venture, which has come on a completely different scale. He’s started his own bow tie business — Rock Avenue Bow Ties which specializes in the design and creation of neck wear and pocket squares.
“It’s a series of strange occurrences,’’ Jenkins said with a a laugh on how the bow tie business began. “Again my rookie year in New Orleans we had a dress code to wear a coat and tie. Well that dress code turned into a fashion show every travel day.
“Everyone had custom suits, the nice shoes, all of that. My way to kind of stand out, I started wearing bow ties, just to be different.
“Then I was at an event and I ran into a guy wearing a bow tie and he asked me if I tied my own. I said, ‘no, it’s a clip on,’ He looked at me funny.
“So I learned how to tie them and once I did I fell in love with them and stopped wearing regular neckties.’’
In some places it was tough to find bow ties that Jenkins liked, so after complaining to his wife, Morissa, he did something about it.
“It was her idea,’’ Jenkins said. “She told me I should just make my own. She made it sound like it would be easy. I called her bluff. I went out and bought a sewing machine, some fabric and Googled ‘How to make a bow tie.’ I stayed up one night, all night, learning how to do it.
“The first ones weren’t good enough to sell to anyone.’’
That was April, by July Rock Avenue Bow Ties were born.
“It just snowballed,’’ Jenkins said. “It’s really grass roots. It’s just me, my wife and the manufacturer. But it’s been fun.’’
Right now it’s all on line sales at rockavenuebowties.com, but he plans to go the retail route soon.
“It’s going well,’’ he said. “I like it.’’