Budgeting 101

Photo Credit: Mariah

After an amazing spring break, our mentees returned this week. We started the first day of week 7 mentorship with an ice breaker asking, “What are two things that make you unique?”. Afterward, we discussed ideas for community projects. During our Summer 2021 mentorship, we had two groups create a community project. This first group project was Conversation Food Desert, where a group of mentees started up a conversation about Maywood being a food desert. The second group project was Maywoodian Families, this group found families in our community and photographed them, along with a series of questions and answers. These projects were shown to our current spring mentees to get inspiration for their community projects.

After our dialogue on community projects, we welcomed Stephanie, a TFD board member, to lead a workshop on how to budget. It was so great to see our mentees engage in a dialogue about financial wellness; one of our three pillars at TFD. Stephanie shared tips & advice on how to understand the process of budgeting, practical budgeting tools, and encouraged budgeting.

As a group, our 8 mentees created a mock college student budget of $2,000 along with a list of expenses. This individual was responsible for: car insurance, gas, textbooks, food, wants, household items, savings, credit card debt, cell phone, rent, and investments. It was amazing to see how invested our mentees were in this workshop. We cannot wait for the next one!

Photo Credit: Mariah

En Pilsen Community Building

Carlo from En Pilsen led a workshop with our Mentees on how to become closer to your community. He explained to our mentees how important community is and shared ways to become closer to your neighbors. Using local hashtags on Instagram and other social media platforms can connect you to other people within your neighborhood. In Pilsen, Carlo began a clean up and restoration at a community garden to allow neighbors to connect and become closer to their community, which similar to what we have in Maywood. You can find out more about the work that Carlo is doing within in Pilsen on Instagram.

Photo Credit: Mariah

Building A Brand

Everyone knows of someone who owns their own brand but have you ever thought about how they formed it? We just started our fifth week of mentorship that all about branding. Our board President Deon Bonaparte of Agency Evolve, led his 4th workshop with TFD on “How To Build A Brand".” Deon went over the steps on how to build your brand with three steps: build the foundation, brand strategy, and a business plan. The most important information that our mentees learned was to clearly articulate what they want their brand to be, look like, and feel. Deon left the mentees with a quote from Walt Disney. “Walt Disney was asked, “How do you feel on your deathbed knowing that you will not be able to see Disney world come to life?” Walt Disney replied “I already have”. You need to understand your brand before you start it.” We are so appreciative of our Board president and cannot wait to welcome him back during our Summer mentorship!

Photo Credit: Mariah

Social Media

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Today, Lu’Cretia from Girl Behind The Hustle, led a workshop for our mentees about social media. She discussed the logistics of running social media accounts for a brand and how to make it easier with other apps to schedule posts and help with the editing process. She also advised our mentees that video is a main way to connect with your audience. Our mentees got to do some research for their own brands and learned how the process of creating a business goes when it comes to social media. LC had a lot of great advice to give our young adults and was very helpful in showing them creative ways to elevate their own brands. Our mentees learned a lot and we hope to work with Lu’Cretia again soon!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Business Bootcamp

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

In the first workshop from Saturday, our mentees were visited by Robert from Healthy Coin to learn about business. In this workshop, Robert discussed the basics behind creating a business, pricing of products and services, how money works within a business, and supply & demand. They also discussed how that can cause competition between businesses. After the lesson, the mentees got to compete in an exciting and intense game reviewing everything they learned for the day. It was a lot of fun and everyone learned so much!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose