LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. — Cornell Bunting wrote an equation on a whiteboard which has more to do with life than math.
The author and entrepreneur was teaching 12-year-old Messiah, that you can't skip a step in life.
With Bunting's non-profit Everyone Has A Story, he does soft-skill lessons like this for more than a thousand disadvantaged kids all over Southwest Florida and even where he's from in Jamaica.
Bunting said, "Helping individuals understand there's another way. They do have a purpose. There is something that is gonna get created. It won't get created without them being a part of it."
He said empowering young people is his purpose.
Find out how Bunting found his passion in Lehigh Acres Community Correspondent Ella Rhoades' report below:
"I learned something that looks impossible can be possible," Messiah said about his lesson written on the whiteboard earlier.
The past three years Messiah has worked with Bunting, building self reliance, confidence and learning about who he is as person.
Messaih said, "more comfortable, expressing my feelings to other people."
If everyone has a story, what's Bunting's?
He moved from Jamaica to Southwest Florida, went to college here and started his own business, but then he went to jail for ten months.
"Some would say, you've been through some bad stuff, but in those moments, the dots were getting connected and it was like I was finding what my purpose was," Bunting explained.
He proved in court he was wrongly convicted, but the young people he met in jail inspired him to help out kids in the community.
While he served time, he wrote his first book about his story, Lion With No Roar.
"This lion, that you know is roaring and is doing things, but I felt like when this thing happened, I didn't really have a voice," Bunting said.
He's published eight other books since his release and even started a game you can find on the app store, based on one of the books, to raise money for his non-profit mentoring students. Bunting also has traveled across the country and world as a motivational speaker.
Proving no matter what, you can write your own ending.
