As new non-profit founders, the big question for us was – where to start? Last fall, I happened to hear about 4.0, a New Orleans-based incubator that funds early-stage entrepreneurs who are working to redefine the future of education. It’s funny how things find their way to you. About five years ago, I did an executive certificate program through the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Social Impact Strategy (CSIS) – also with the idea of starting a non-profit focused on mentoring first-gen students for college and career success. That venture never got off the ground, but fast-forward four years, when I read about 4.0 in a CSIS Facebook group. After an extensive written application and interview process, we were selected for 4.0’s Essentials Fellowship!
There are four components to Essentials: curriculum, coaching, community, and cash – all to help us designa small-scale pop-up event to test at the end of the program. I love that 4.0 doesn’t just invest in ideas – they prepare you to just try something out while also strengthening your leadership skills and teaching you how to constantly iterate. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, coming up with something and putting it out into the universe is definitely outside of my comfort zone, so this was perfect.
For four months, we worked through an intense online curriculum designed to help us think about how our multiple identities inform and affect our work. We reflected on the communities that we plan to work with and the role of our own power and privilege. We were matched with an amazing mentor – Danielle Stewart, founder of In School Spirit and an alum of 4.0’s two fellowships – for regular virtual coaching sessions.
At the beginning of March 2020, Tim and I headed to Essentials Camp in New Orleans with nineteen other 4.0 fellows working on all kinds of amazing things – starting schools, developing programs and services, and working on educational technology solutions. With our coaches and the fantastic 4.0 staff, we worked on our pop-up ideas and dug into metrics. We did multiple rounds of improv and practiced pitching our ideas. Being in community with people committed to educational equity was all of the adjectives – transformative, powerful, inspiring, and truly life-changing. And, we were lucky enough to make it to camp just before COVID-19 turned everything upside down.
After camp, the last piece of Essentials is to hold your pop-up event with a little bit of cash from 4.0. Our original plan was to connect Filipino high school students in our community of Oxnard, California with Filipino students from our local universities, to talk about all things college and career. There’s a small Filipino restaurant in our neighborhood that we absolutely love, Mestiza Kitchen, and we had been talking with the owners about hosting the event there. We were getting ready to recruit participants and order EDGE swag, but unfortunately, the challenges of the pandemic brought everything to a halt. It took us another seven months, but we eventually pivoted our plans and shifted to a virtual event, which we’ll share more about in our next blog post!
