Go Lean Commentary
Despite the words as was first used by Cain in the Bible’s drama (Genesis 4:9) of “Cain and Abel”, the reality is:
I am my brother’s keeper.
This is a simple concept. It’s an extension from the premise that “no man is an island”. This truism helps us to appreciate that we, as individuals, need others in our communities. We cannot make progress alone; we all need a helping hand to get-up, step-up and stay-up. (Some people, think the youth, needs more help than others).
The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, is quoted to say:
“I have always believed that the single most important task we have as a nation is to make sure our young people can go as far as their dreams and hard work will take them. It is the single most important thing we can do for our country’s future. And we’ve got to do it together.”
President Obama – during his administration and after – has advocated for mentoring of youth in high-risk communities. Being the country’s first Black president, his focus was always the plight of the youth in the Black-and-Brown communities. To that end, he created the “My Brother’s Keeper Alliance” with the expressed purpose of facilitating mentorship. His rationale:
Research shows that young adults that have mentors are 52% more likely to attend school regularly and 55% more likely to attend college.
These were more than just words for President Obama; he talked the talk and walked the walk. He also put time, talent and treasuries into this pursuit. See here, the About Us page of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance states the following:
In 2014, President Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) and issued a powerful call to action to close opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color. The initiative sparked candid dialogue and action around the country to help more of our young people reach their dreams, regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status.
To scale and sustain this mission, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance (MBK Alliance) was launched in 2015 as an independent nonprofit organization. Since launching, a national movement has grown: Nearly 250 cities, counties, and Tribal Nations have accepted the MBK Community Challenge — President Obama’s call to action to adopt innovative approaches, strengthen support, and build ladders of opportunity for boys and young men of color — scores of new initiatives have been implemented, and there has been an exponential increase in aligned private sector commitments, all helping to reduce barriers and expand opportunity.
Today, as an initiative of the Obama Foundation, MBK Alliance leads a national call to action to build safe and supportive communities for boys and young men of color where they feel valued and have clear paths to opportunity. Alongside our partners across sectors, we will accelerate impact in targeted communities, mobilize resources, and promote what works, all with the goal of encouraging mentorship, reducing youth violence, and improving life outcomes for boys and young men of color.
OUR VISION
We believe every young person deserves equal opportunity to achieve success, regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Our vision is to make this a reality for all of our nation’s boys and young men of color, each and every one of whom is critical to our collective success. By realizing this vision, we are creating a brighter, more promising future not just for our boys and young men of color, but for the country.MBK Alliance is committed to leading the way to ensure success for all youth.
This is President’s Obama’s effort to help the Black Youth of America. For the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, we have our own advocacies. Among them, helping the youth in the Caribbean. (In actuality, the majority population of 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states is Black-and-Brown). Our mission is the same.
This commentary is NOT our first effort to identify the help that our population of young men and boys in the Caribbean need. Previously we published a White Paper – read it here – by the nationally-admired Bahamian Educator Dr. Donald McCartney; that composition summarizes as follows:
Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean
Sub-title: How do we can save our Black men and boys? Many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem … in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.
The White Paper is more than just an academic exercise; it proposed tactical, practical and reasonable solutions, one of which is an organized scheme for mentoring. The White Paper introduced the formation of the Charles Thurston Foundation as an entity to execute on this mandate.
Now, we are able to present the quest for a strategic partnership between the Charles Thurston Foundation and the My Brother’s Keep Alliance (MBKA). This latter Alliance already list many strategic partnerships on the organization’s web site, including in the Caribbean. See Photo here:
This is the Way Forward … for the mentoring agenda for Caribbean youth.
We now have the plan; we must work the plan.
See the plan in action in this VIDEO here:
VIDEO – Arrive as Many. Rise as One. Experience MBK Rising! – https://youtu.be/-Gcwk8R2V6E
Obama Foundation
Published on Feb 22, 2019 – MBK Rising! is a national convening of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance in Oakland, California, that brought together hundreds of young men of color and leaders working to break down barriers that too often leave boys and young men of color at a disadvantage. From a town hall conversation with President Obama and Steph Curry where young men could ask questions, to a candid conversation on the interconnectedness of race, gender, and sexual orientation, to an exploration of what’s working in communities across the country working to improve the lives of boys and young men of color, MBK Rising! created moments to celebrate progress and rally people near and far to continue the work of building a bright future for each and every one of us.You can learn more at obama.org/mbka
- Category: Nonprofits & Activism
While the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance is a American initiative, as an organization, they are willing to consult and collaborate with their Caribbean “brothers”. This was declared by President Obama, when he visited the Caribbean, Jamaica to be exact, in April 2015. The Appendix VIDEO highlights his regional commitment.
Make no mistakes, the Go Lean movement does not seek to make Caribbean member-states to be like the United States of America. No, we want to be better. That land has a lot of societal defects that are hard to overcome; racism is in America’s DNA. Our majority Black-and-Brown population starts with that advantage. We must only do the heavy-lifting to elevate our societal engines.
Let’s get started! (Already, our failures have resulted in an abominable abandonment rate among our tertiary educated demographic – 70 percent).
We must make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. We want to keep our young people and offer hope for them to have a prosperous future. We want them to prosper where planted. 🙂
About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
- Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.
The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.
Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.
Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
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Appendix VIDEO – US President Obama Speaks at Young Leaders Town Hall – https://youtu.be/636mgw1THpc
Published on Apr 9, 2015 – President Obama delivers remarks and answers questions at a town hall with Young Leaders of the Americas at University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. April 9, 2015.
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