Our Dream of a Future Institute
We are passionate about giving young people, tools and skills to create successful business or to discover how they can solve daily problems around their community by providing a service.
Through hands-on learning, building projects, and the use of technology, we hope to empower young people with the knowledge and trades to be equipped to enter the workforce with critical thinking and professional mindsets.
What have we learned after 10 years of business
After 10 years of running a successful business and training our children, we see so many young people drop out of college or don’t know how to enter the workforce with the trades and skills that they need to Provide for their family.
So many young people get caught up on having to have higher level of education in order to be “successful.” But we are living proof that through creativity and thinking out of the box, we were able to run successful businesses out of the pandemic and actually grow them.
Right now we are working out of our home studio and training young entrepreneurs in photography, marketing, contracting, graphic design and how to run a successful business- we hope to expand some day to an actual institute in a workshop with real tools, computers, software, a studio and Wood shop equipment.
We hope to have a consistent teaching schedule with classes so that anyone in the community can come learn professional trades and skills.
Why this area? Who are we teaching?
Our home is located 10 minutes from Norfolk, Virginia, 10 minutes from South Norfolk, Chesapeake and 10 minutes From VA Beach.
We seem to be at the crossroads of so many different economic areas and diverse students. Every weekend we have 20 or so people that come over to the house to learn and to grow- mostly young minority teenagers and single moms. We Hope to get a building someday so that we can expand our borders and provide college level free or cheap education.
Why is education our mission?
2020 showed us that the traditional work environment in a 9-to-5 office was not going to sustain families with children.
Have a heart and passion to equip young mother and minority students to help their community through their skill sets.
We love having small businesses being birthed out of our small business.
We just have a garage full of woodworking tools, we love creating things from reclaimed materials. Young people need to work with equipment and tools hands-on and learn valuable life lessons in the process.
We’ve had people come to our door in the mist of 2020 after learning on zoom for an entire year and not retain anything. Through our hands-on workshops- they are learning how to do math, writing, public speaking and more.
Why we need a bigger space someday
Having woodworking tools, vinyl cutters, professional video editing software computers, a fully equipped photo Studio, piles of wood tools and materials laying around our house gets to be pretty overwhelming and expensive! Our doors constantly open to anyone that wants to learn in our community- I would love to have a lease on a building so that we can keep our home and business separate.
Right now, our backyard is our workshop area and our photo studio is only 500 ft.², so we are very limited on the amount of people that can come and what we can actually do depending on the weather.
We would love to have a one -stop-shop workshop and creative warehouse so that we can serve more people.
Why do we see the need for a different education style?
We have been homeschooling for six years, even before the pandemic, and we emphasize in our home basic entrepreneur principles like taking responsibility, having a mission statement, being a self-starter and other critical thinking skills.
The pandemic just showed how our traditional sit-down education system is NOT truly equipping students for a post-COVID world.
We were very saddened to hear that during the pandemic, minority students were the ones marginalized because of the lack of technology, resources, books and materials, and mentorship. We have a heart and a passion for minority owned businesses and business start ups. We have been able to mentor several single mothers trying to create a business during the pandemic to provide for their children.
in our home, traditional "sit-down" Learning time only happens a few hours a day. The rest of the day we spent creating, making, communing with nature, learning life skills and discussing current events. We want to give that gift to people in this community that don't have the opportunities to discover, make mistakes and ask questions.
Our 10-year-old was able to start a candle business and grow her social media account to almost 500 people within a month. We were able to have her be featured on two different podcast and blogs for her entrepreneur skills at a young age. Our seven-year-old is making furniture out of reclaimed materials and already sold one after a week. If our children can learn entrepreneur skills, we would love to teach others.
Why are we passionate and what is our vision?
Our idea for a Institute where everyone in the community can learn no matter the social economic status or race, is going to open up so many doors for those that cannot do higher level education or gifted and talented charter schools because of the lack of money.
We would love to use the money to have a space and pay on a lease so that we can open up our doors officially to the public and use our talents and skills to showcase minority businesses, create a pop-up environment for people to sell their work, teach workshops and classes, do contact creation and mentoring for other business owners.
Finding a warehouse that would accommodate wood making equipment, a full photo studio set up, a computer room, a co-working space and more.
We would love to have a meeting room as well for people to make content and collaborations for other entrepreneurs to do meet ups. We would love it open floor space as well for events and conferences.
We would love it in a central area so that those that don't have transportation can ride the bus. We need it to have a large parking lot as well so that if we run a big event, there's enough space to accommodate. We would also love people that have mobile businesses to come and set them up in the parking lot.
How can we get support?
Stay tuned for more as we are applying for grants, and we are developing a mission and a landing page for this idea!