If You Missed Our Urban Male…
In 2013, Epicenter Community started one of our signature series called The Urban Male. The intent was to center a safe space around men of color, to provide a night where they can come together, network and support eachother in a myriad of ways. Previous topics have covered things from Entrepreneurship to Marketing. Last night, we explored a couple of topics centering around #Millennials & #Mentoring. How are Millennials changing the cultural landscape? What is the importance of mentoring and passing down knowledge in our communities?
How are Millennials changing the cultural landscape? What is the importance of mentoring and passing down knowledge in our communities?
Our amazing panel consisted of Jourdan Christopher of Jourdan Christopher Stories, Khalil Vidark & Schneider Predestin of Debonair Gentlemen & Jeremy Colon of JC Enterprises/ Blessed You Clothing. All of these young men are millennial entrepreneurs giving back to the community in a myriad of ways.
Schneider Predestin kicked off the event with an amazing Spoken Word piece about racial inequality and anti-blackness.
After his performance, we launched into introducing our panel. Epicenter Community President Malia Lazu opened the discussion with a question about mentoring- how important is it to both #mentor and to be #mentored? How has it changed their lives?
Jeremy, both a personal trainer and life coach, talked about how important it is to take action when pursuing passions and dreams, even without a #mentor. Both Schneider and Khalil talked about their backgrounds and how they’ve been impacted and how they’ve impacted others. Schneider’s decision to change his major from Pre-Med to study Fashion & Art wasn’t seen as “acceptable” by some of the people in his life- but he took the leap anyway and was able to use his experiences to encourage another young student to take the same leap of faith. Khalil moved us all with telling us how his daughter is both his #mentee & his #mentor in life.
Then we moved into the other topic of the night: Millennials and the shift in culture. Malia reminded us of some of the ubiquitous sentiments and steoreotypes about Millennials, going from Millennials being lazy & entitled to Millennials being too social media and technology obsessed.
All of the panel members touched on the fact that the support from older generations when it comes to creative expression and drive, is lacking in our communities. Jourdan Christopher drew upon his childhood growing up in Memphis and the lack of support from adults to go after a career in writing & photography. “There’s a disconnect,” he said. “I was never passed a baton- I had it all along and never realized it…”
“There’s a disconnect,” he said. “I was never passed a baton- I had it all along and never realized it…”
Afterwards, the the floor was open for a Q&A session. We were so happy to have Chris Jones from Big Brother, Big Sister come up and speak on how to get involved in mentoring in our communities and how much it can change lives and paths.
The night ended with lots of dope networking and building and wings & pizza a la Dudley Dough :) Shoutout to Luther for providing the space, set up and food!
