Creating the blueprint, an eco-system for our communities to not only survive, but to thrive and adapt in tough environments.
How do we plan on doing this? Here’s a simple breakdown:
We create the products, generate the ideas, and bring them to life.
In exchange for our goods and services, the contributors, can purchase items where a portion of profits go directly back into the community.
How does this get split? The idea is that the bigger we grow as a company, the more we are able to do. Goals to provide scholarships for students, grants or funding to fuel a passion project, and or serve as a motivation to go towards something that would help inspire someone to get them out the hood.
What else? Of course with plans of doing social events, school givebacks, giving back to the more needy, creating an environment we we can be proud of.
Why are we doing this?
To put it in the most honest way and as raw as it could be, I was once in those same shoes. In the transition of becoming an adult, looking for a respective blueprint from either the bigger homies on how to play this game of life, or from those we admired on TV. The mission was to make it out the hood, but to come back and water the seeds that grew from it. Before graduating high school, I actually didn’t have a plan to pursue college. I didn’t have much of a plan honestly, I just thought I was going to work and I guess figure out life as it comes, but somehow one of the homies put me on to this scholarship they were offering at my high school to minorities living in under privilege neighborhoods. I applied and wrote no more than 2 paragraphs, putting it as simple and real as can be, “I need money because my parent’s can’t afford to pay for my books.”, and this was not to shy away from the fact that they were working individuals and did everything they possibly could to give me to opportunities in life, but simply because they were working to survive; pay for food, rent, bills and anything more after that was just a plus.
I won that scholarship, and even though it paid me $750 a semester at Long Beach City College, the only thing I had to do was keep my grades up to a 2.0 and get paid? That alone was inspiration to just go to school. What else did it mean? It showed me that there was a reason, there was a plan for me to outgrow the hood, but not to run away from it. The plan was to create a legacy so big to pass down for generations that soon one day, the mud we come from would turn into gold.