Starting a Movement
/Growing up “BALL IS LIFE!” was the motto. So the opportunity to play basketball or watch it on tv or talking about it in barbershops or watching dudes hoop on the streets was everything to me. I grew up loving watching the NBA. Watching the UNTOLD doc on AND1 took me back to the passion I had for the sport when I was in HS, a time when I was practicing moves on the playground that I could never pull off in a real game. AND1 helped me fall in love with basketball all over again. I was inspired to be different.
“When untapped potential or talent is discovered and given an opportunity, it has the power to create a movement.” - Anonymous
As entrepreneurs, the founding team at AND1 was up against their version of “Goliath” (NIKE). NIKE had everything polished and put together, and tailored their approach to appeal to the mainstream consumers with major purchasing power. NIKE was careful not to disrupt the emotions and attitude of middle-class or corporate “middle America”. As successful as NIKE had become, they left a clear void in the marketplace. There was an enormous community that was slipping through the cracks, yearning for engagement in the space of basketball and athletic apparel.
When AND1 launched as a clothing brand for the basketball community, including a line of basketball shoes, they assumed their only path to success was to follow the same path to mass appeal with brand ambassadors playing the game at the highest professional level. But how could they use the same formula and still compete for a share of the market? …the answer is, they couldn’t… and they figured it out the hard way. All failure comes with important lessons if we’re willing to reflect and learn from it.
The founders at AND1 decided to shift. They took a new approach to engage the “street baller” community. They engaged the leaders in this space of untapped potential/talent, and found a way to capture their message. The new approach helped to rebrand AND1 in a manner that was more personal, unique, and authentic to represent their shared experiences. They empowered streetball superstars, a charismatic hype man, and a message that resonated with an enormous community of passionate people who had felt forgotten and overlooked. The newly formed AND1 crew toured streetball venues across the country, released highlight reel tapes of their games, and engaged directly with the community. Before they could process what was happening, they had started a movement. Capturing the hearts and minds of basketball players and fans everywhere, people began to pay attention and show up to get involved. The clothes and shoes flew off the shelves, the games sold out, and streetball venues quickly turned into packed NBA arenas. They started a movement. Their message resonated with their audiences, their image represented those who couldn’t connect as well with the one-size-fits-all polished approach of NIKE, and they celebrated and valued everything that was new and different.
Coaching4Change is having a parallel experience to AND1. We were founded as an after-school program focused on sports based youth development through mentoring. This model of supporting student growth during after school time was effective, but not well received because it did not clearly translate into school day success. In addition, we found ourselves competing with our own “Goliaths” in the Boys & Girls Clubs and YMCAs. We learned that our true value was our ability to bring additional support to youth through mentoring. By partnering directly with schools and placing mentors into school day, after-school, and summer programs, we were able to fill the massive void that exists in education and youth development. This is our opportunity to find a more authentic, personal, and unique way to reach the people we need to serve.
The nation is facing a crisis in education with the stifling lack of staff and educators working in schools. Students and schools are being left without the necessary resources and personnel to accomplish the national goal of educating our youth and preparing them to become contributing members of our society. This could be the greatest threat to education that we have ever faced, and this is the void that we must fill. Utilizing college students as support staff in schools that struggle with staffing has become the secret sauce. We recruit, train, and place diverse, talented college students with similar life experience and culture to work directly with students. This model addresses the immediate needs of the students and lack of school staff, while building a pipeline of future educator candidates.
I see the College Mentors at Coaching4Change similarly to the AND1 superstar streetballers. Our college student mentors are not in education prep programs (yet), they often have not considered careers in education (yet), and they don’t come in from a long line of educators in their family. They are majority students of color with shared background experiences and cultures to the students they serve, and they are often first generation college students. There is more diversity on college campuses today, than ever before. We are tapping into a space of untapped potential and talent to build a movement.
The Coaching4Change movement starts with our goal to place 1,000 college students in schools in the next 1,000 days. We need your support to reach this goal.
Call to Action:
Check out our website and social media (facebook, instagram, twitter)
Reach out to me to learn how you can get involved (email: marquis@c4cinc.org)
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