Racial Equity
Black Girls Do STEM
Entrepreneur: Cynthia Chapple
Nonprofit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
Black Girls Do STEM (BGDSTEM) provides a seven-year continuous pathway for Black girls beginning in 6th grade through to university and workforce entry. The 6th-9th grade girls engage in a Saturday Academy community-based STEM exploratory learning program for 8 months (28-32 hours) in community and 16 weeks (28-32 hours) as an after school program. This programming promotes innovation and understanding of many problem solving approaches and design methodologies. Students are introduced to the engineering design process, design thinking framework to help them utilize tools to better define and understand problems and create solutions. The girls also participate in group mentoring with BGDSTEM’s network of Black women in STEM. BGDSTEM is aimed at increasing curiosity and interest in STEM coursework in traditional K-12 educational environments and beyond into higher education and career development.
Detroit Heals Detroit
Entrepreneur: Sirrita Darby
Nonprofit | Founded: 2018 | Visit the Site
Detroit Heals Detroit builds access to healing, joy, and liberation for Detroit youth through healing justice, youth-led organizing, and asset-driven strategies that combat systemic and generational trauma.
Firestarters
Entrepreneur: Edwin Stevenson
Founded: 2022
Firestarters is a movement dedicated to relearn, restore and reclaim our ancestral homelands by building stewardship data, leadership and advocacy for LANDBACK. Decolonizing learning to end cultural genocide, Firestarters is building an equitable and sustainable world through environmental education and sovereignty. Firestarters combats anti-Indigenous values, leadership and systems rooted in colonialism.
FREE ALAS
Entrepreneur: Lisa María Rhodes
Nonprofit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
ALAS uproots barriers that limit education, career, and civil rights of immigrant and court-affected students by organizing youth and families to lead educator training and policy advocacy.
ALAS’ trainings and policy advocacy reshape the educational systems’ engagement with and proactively support of youth who are arrested or undocumented.
Our youth and families help educators, policymakers and community members reshape attitudes, conscientiousness, and responsibility to create environments of belonging at school and to disrupt mass incarceration for youth.
Hipeexnu’ Kii’u Nuun Wisiix
Entrepreneur: Bessie Walker
Nonprofit | Founded: 2018 | Visit the Site
Hipeexnu’ Kii’u Nuun Wisiix is a nonprofit language and cultural immersion program designed to serve community youth and families by teaching them the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) dialect, which is on the verge of extinction, through cultural lessons and summer activities.
Love Your Magic
Entrepreneur: Ivanna Solano
Nonprofit | Founded: 2017 | Visit the Site
Love Your Magic is a grassroots organization committed to the healthy development of Black and Brown girls. The work of Love Your Magic includes robust programming and initiatives designed to empower and support Black and Brown girls through an emphasis on self-advocacy, self-love, and sisterhood.
MindCatcher Education
Entrepreneur: Nakeyshia Kendall Williams
Nonprofit | Founded: 2018 | Visit the Site
MindCatcher disrupts the poverty cycle of hopelessness, disconnection, and inadequate resources in learning spaces and replaces it with the pursuit of equity, inclusion, and belonging. They are laser focused on supporting the leadership and social emotional growth of those closest to the most vulnerable communities, youth and site leaders of color.
ProjectHEAL LLC
Entrepreneur: Johnny B. Reed
For-profit | Founded: 2017 | Visit the Site
ProjectHEAL’s mission is to provide culturally relevant and antiracist Trauma-Informed Professional Development for adults and establish meditation and calming centers for students to increase access to social emotional and mental health supportive services. ProjectHEAL envisions a future where all school staff, parents and caregivers practice Trauma-Informed interventions–language, mindsets and skills–to support students as they navigate stress and trauma in an effort to: strengthen emotional resilience, advance emotional intelligence, improve personal well-being and thrive academically.
The Transition Academy
Entrepreneur: Kim Riley
Nonprofit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
The Transition Academy is a disability college and career planning center based in Kansas City, Missouri’s urban core. The organization’s main purpose is to ensure African American youth who learn differently are equipped to become contributing members of society after high school.
TrueFiktion LLC
Entrepreneur: Stephane Manuel
For-profit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
TrueFiktion is an ed-tech company that uses comics, curriculum, and community to teach the untold stories of marginalized groups. The organization believes that the battle for equity and equality starts with the history we learn as adolescents and they are on a mission to redefine the way the world learns about history.