5) Description of health product/service offering: The heath issue that "Balance: The Ultimate Antidote" primarily addresses is "Ignorance". The beneficiaries are all youth in low-income and marginalized populations as well as the whole entire community in those demographic areas.

The product that we have created is a book entitled "The Hiphop Driven Life". We see that one major way to communicate to the youth is by something that we are ourselves, a part of Hiphop culture.

The book can be summed up into one word and that’s "Balance". The book shows how, through a Hiphoppa's perspective in which is who the youth ages 10-25 listen to more in lower income communities all over the world, an individual can learn to use the consciousness of Hiphop culture to identify with "Self". After learning more of its culture side and not its material side, they will see that it's not the stuff on T.V. or in magazines, and that it has morals and principles of respect that can enhance youth decision making. We also show in the book principals and viable concepts that lower income communities can use to better value their selves. We realized that this is the first step in lessening the number of deaths, self-victimizations, and ill treatments in the lower income communities that in most regions are the primary causes of ill health.

The theme of our book comes down to a simple balancing of the mind, social understanding, and a controlling of the emotional spontaneities that spark in all individuals whether it be anger, hostility, pleasure, happiness, enthrallment, discomfort, ext. The reading is on an adult level.

Part to the book, speaking seminars and discussions are other services we offer the community that can be held at any grass roots center, educational institution, or any building that is holding a convention for an open discussion, discourse, or speech on self-empowerment and positive thinking. We also offer music as another powerful way to communicate and educate the youth in lower income communities.

6) Description of innovation: The biggest difference from what we are doing verses other programs is that we focus more on the causes more then the effects. By this I mean that, most programs want to cure the person(s) whom are already either physically or mentally sick in certain geographic localities rather then curing the major causes for the many illnesses that occur.

We want to focus on what some of the primary controllable causes are. An example of this is if you were to go to the Chicago projects to help feed the needy. We see that “Neediness” is the effect of what the cause for the neediness is. So if we, with our approach, were to go to the same locality, and sense their are many programs curing as much of the effects as they can, or in this case, are donating food, we would focus on the social environment and what it’s doing to the community psychologically. It would give us a stronger idea of why so many people are needy in that type of area. It would show us the decisions they make and mind states that they are in that are affecting them and the generations born into it. This can be done without costing millions but can save millions of lives. With this being said, we would see that each individual in the Chicago projects needs knowledge on self-empowerment, unity, and respect that can change the social environment to being more communal and less dangerous.

The particular unique components of our approach is the fact that our book, speech, and music creations are all self created and so are the only one of their kind. Not one person is the same, and so no-one can create or deliver a message in the same way that another can. This is why our approach is completely different. In regards to our book, there are only a hand full of books written on Hiphop intellectualism from a Hiphoppa’s perspective, our book "The Hiphop Driven Life" is one of them and is currently the only Hiphop book on the market primarily about self-empowerment and/or mental balance.

7) Operational model: The primary activities that our organization focuses on are speaking engagements, discourses, discussions, panels, basic youth one-on-one counseling for troubled youth or youths affiliated with criminal activities, music performances, conventional gatherings, any Hiphop convention, and/or/not limited to Q and A meetings about Hiphop and the Youth.

The structure that we have laid down to communicate to the low-income or marginalized populations is based on community support. We have products and services to offer any organization that is in need for helping hands in joining together for assisting those communities.

We are also affiliated with a few other groups. Two of the groups we are affiliated with are for the advancement and fight for true Hiphop culture and the third is a major organization providing youth with the opportunity that can benefit them by giving them financial assistance to any project that benefits the community.

Over the course of a year and a half, our group has gone around to different organizations for any events that they have had for the community around the Washington DC area.

8) Human resources: Currently, excluding the other organizations that we team up with, we have two main people. One is myself, Arnett Kale Powell and the other is Adebayo Alabi Olorounto.

I, Arnett Kale Powell, came from around the Lafayette, Gary, and Fort Wayne Indiana area. I grew up apart of the lower-income or marginalized areas. I understand a lot of the hardships and factors that they go through. One of the main factors I expericed, which is one of the major destructive factors in the lower-income areas, is the lack of two parents.

Adebayo Alabi Olorounto or Bayo Olorunto for short, grew up around Radford, Virgina, Huntsville, Alabama, and Clacksville and Nashville Tennessee. He also too grew up with a split up mother and father.

We are both cousins on our mother’s side and are both bi-racial. My father is African American and Bayo's father is from Nigeria in Africa. Both of our mothers are sisters and are Caucasian American. I am currently 20 years old and Bayo is currently 26.

9) Key operational partnerships: The type of partnerships that we have thus far established have been business-social partnerships in dealing mainly with Hiphop, its impact on the youth, and how it can benefit the community.

The three main partner organizations that we have dealt with thus far are with Krs-One's Temple of Hiphop, Lee Majors Verse 4 Verse, and Youth Venture. There are many other different organizations that we have assisted just for a particular event, but aren't the main organizations that we deal with.

Krs-One is an emcee from the 1980's who has developed an organization called “The Temple of Hiphop”. We associate with his Temple members such as Malik One, Claudia, and Born Free. We discuss the state of Hiphop and what needs to be done. We mainly deal with them by phone because of the fact that “The Temple of Hiphop” is located in California.

Lee Major's Verse 4 Verse and Youth Venture are our main allies or other organizations that we are teamed up with. Verse 4 Verse or www.verse4verse.com is an organization located in College Park, MD and deals with the advancement of Hiphop culture and roots. It also is about true Hiphop’s “emceein” element and it’s “djayin” element. Youth Venture is our third organization that we are teamed up with. It is tied in with Ashoka and deals with providing an opportunity, for youth that have an idea that benefits the community, to gain finances and a learning experience as an entrepreneur.

10) Financial Sustainability

          • Fees charged to clients?: Yes

          • How do you assure affordability?: We do charge a reasonable fee for speaking, products such as books and CD's, and/or assisting any clients that need our joining help with a program that they are holding.

We have a mechanism set or a flexibility that allows us to work with an organization that has a budget that doesn’t quite reach our means. This all depends on the locality, distance, transportation, lodging, food, products, ext that go into us teaming up with the organization. It also depends on how much funding or financial assistance we get from external sources as well. The more help we get, the easier it is for us to work with organizations that really need our help but have a smaller budget to work with.

          • Earned incomes as a percentage of operating costs: N/A

          • Other funding sources: Our organization is self-sustainable and profitable due to the longevity of our product creation. The more products and services we can provide and the more organizations that can afford to have us come, the more profits we will have to keep functioning and serving the community more on a national and then soon international scale.

Besides our books, CD's, and speaking engagements as funding or income, right now we are currently in the process of finding more financial and network sources for funding and event scheduling.

          • Strategy for long-term sustainability: Our strategy is to keep creating music and book projects, provide our services as far as speaking and or panel discussions to local, national, and international organizations, and to do music performances for organizations that we build long term relationships with. We believe that there are always, every year, going to be people who need our services and products for mental clarity and balance so as long as we continue operating our organization and human beings continue to suffer in the world. This is something that you have to dedicate your life to, and that is what we have done. We have dedicated ourselves for the rest of our lives to help lower income communities and marginalized populations continue to think in self-empowering, unifying, and prosperous ways.

11) Current and Future Impact

          • Total number of clients: 500-1000

          • Clients in the past year: 500-1000

          • Percentage of low-income clients: N/A

          • Impact: With the type of service we provide the community, it is hard to estimate the total impact of what we have done. We have sold 500-1000 books plus have given away 250-300 CD's to mainly individuals that may have to came an event that one of the organizations held. But the responses we get back from the individual organizations or individuals who have purchased our book that have contacted us, are extremely motivating and inspiring for us to keep going. We mainly get comments from people who felt or feel the same way our book describes life and the social environments especially in the areas of the cities where Hiphop is most supported. They are mainly thankful and appreciative comments for our ability to make sense out of certain life situations for them.

          • Overall "market": Right now in general, there is a huge demand in explanation of whether our youth and communities in the lower income areas are benefiting from Hiphop or not. Also amongst the older generation is a huge demand in the explanation of what Hiphop culture exactly is. Our products and services answer each of those high demanding questions. It's only a process of letting the world know that we exist and may be able to help them with any concerns they have.

What we do is completely universal, and any organization in the world that wants to help the lower income and marginalized communities prosper can benefit and collaborate with what we do. Our products and services aren’t limited to any geographic locality especially with the fact that Hiphop culture is international. The Hiphop community itself is fairly large and in other countries. Most of the lower income and marginalized communities follow its expressions. This puts what we do automatically in a high demand sense the lower income and marginalized communities already are big fans of Hiphop’s culture.

12) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Scaling Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: Our expansion plan for the next three years is to continually market and promote what we do, and to network and build a relationship with as many organizations that want to help lower income communities as possible. With these strong stable relationships, we plan to have a long lasting initiative that can be unlimited in time and length lasting for many generations to come. We also plan on growing our music and performance skills and getting access to better quality recording technology so that we can give our community the best sounds and clarity.

With more prosperity we can be more self sufficient and have freedom with making music that is for our communities benefit and not just for the benefit of making money.

In three years, we plan on being more operational and better able to get to more people in lower income and marginalized communities nationally and internationally.

13) Policy change: The policy that needs to be changed in my field of work is the policy that has to do with funding. I believe that it is too difficult for groups or organizations such as ours to get funding for focusing more on self empowerment and showing lower income communities how to maintain a strong balanced mind and how to take the right action. I believe that funders need to think deeper in the consciousness of the people in those geographic areas rather then to just always give them a hand out expecting them to change. I believe that in order to get social change, we have to first show lower income communities the right state of mind that will help them see peace and happiness sparking the growth for social change.

14) Origin of the initiative: The initiative came about from the collaboration of both my and Bayo's ideas. However, we were definitely influenced by other motivational speakers and speakers for liberation.

Contact Information:
Arnett  Powell
N/A
Nightjohn
(Community Improvement)
5206 Lancelot LN. Apt.#5, Roanoke,VA 24019
United States
Tel: 540-562-4709
Email: divinelydirected@yahoo.com
Website: www.olorun.blogspot.com