Our Vision is local, sustainable communities all over the world.

We call it #Familyhood.

#Familyhood is our community development strategy that utilizes schools as the hub for development.

#Familyhood is driven by two motto’s – Friends of School and Mo’ Better Food.

1) Friends of School states,” every school shall have a functioning Student Government Association, Parent Teacher Association and Alumni Association.”

2) Mo’ Better Food states, “every school shall have a garden, a farmers market and grocery store.’

Follow the movement at twitter.com/Familyhood

The community is first followed by economics. Like yen and yang, like Tehuti and Maat, hot and cold, community and economics compliment each other or should if communities are to become sustainable.

The reason the community is first is because when developing a community strategy,  one has to think systemic. Systemic meaning: How can we create a process that enables everyone to get involved. But even more than involved, how can we keep them consistently engaged and even more: how can they own the fruits of their labor.

The owners of their labor is in a perfect world that currently does not exist. Exploiting workers and land to bring investors their highest return on investment has spread across the world and has become the norm. Which has led communities to be out of balance and the few to exploit the masses.

#Familyhood defines the schools in a community as the hub for development. Not just because of where the school may be located (which is extremely important)  but mainly because of all the people that have gone through the school in the past and those who will attend the school in the future. One of the schools main roles, according to #Familyhood, is to research and collect its past, and track its current students and graduates, moving forward.

To illustrate, my son graduated from High School recently, I asked him, “did the alumni association sign you up to join?” He said, no. As soon as my son or in this case, every student that night received their diplomas, a representative should have been there to sign them up! These are missed opportunities the school had to keep their Alumni engaged in the affairs of the school and possibly the community as a whole.

Since, #familyhood was written primarily to address poverty and strategies communities could use to overcome it, it only makes since  to shift the thinking of #Familyhood as an economic agenda in low-income, under-served communities.

Assuming communities and their best friend -the schools have agreed they should be first, we are more prepared for what comes next – economics. But, before we cross this bridge, lets clarify where we are to make this journey easier.

in most communities, we have what’s called  “High Schools.”  Thus far, high schools have the main role of preparing young minds to graduate and attend college’s outside of the borders of the community.

#familyhood attempts to keep its graduates, no matter where they may go, connected to the community they come from, through the voice of its schools.