HOMEplxce Liberation Arts Business Incubator

Support for Foster and Systems-Impacted Youth

South LA

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Research shows that many foster and system-impacted youth who start business do not succeed beyond their first year because they either don't have the entrepreneurial skills required for the growing process of building a business, their personal traumatic realities and structural insecurities interfere with ensuring sustained personal, communal, and business well-being, or they lack access to capital. My lived experience as a survivor of childhood sexual assault, chronic housing and income insecurity in LA, the support of HOPICS, economic development via various courses, and community health worker mobilization with the Youth Justice Coalition transformed my life and inspired the HOMEplxce integrative model.As such, HOMEplxce has tailored this program to address this particular challenge of balancing one's entrepreneurial dreams with a clear implementation strategy, the transformative healing tools for interrupting trauma induced patterns, program based support towards home-ownership.

HOMEplxce proposes a series of two intensive Healing Arts Residencies which include the three-month HOMEplxce business incubator to foster and systems-impacted youth. The 4-day Liberation Arts Retreats at the beginning and end of each 3-month business incubator session will utilize participatory theater, sound bowl and energy healing, yoga, and transformative justice as creative methodologies that integrate mental wellbeing with business sustainability. The intensive business training will focus on Building your Business Plan and Strategy, Digital Real Estate and Branding; Marketing & Public Relations; Homeownership and Asset Protection. As part of our economic justice ethic, we will train them in app development to launch at their own apps at the end of the program and generate passive income & train their peers as movement building. The incubator will take place online via the HOMEplxce app, and the cohort will participate in the weekly-HOMEplxce Self-healing Sundays to ensure community accountability and check-ins. They will have life-time access to the training for future reference and ongoing peer capacity building. We will support the cohort with enrolling in the NACA home ownership program until they successfully complete their training. The economic safety and home security of foster and system impacted youth is pivotal for individual and community stability, curbs the risks of incarceration and unwanted health outcomes, and promotes communal-advocacy.

The HOMEplxce Integrative model prioritizes overall mental well-being, consistent community and peer accountability, and economic creativity as integral aspects for economic success. Project participants will leave with the tangible skillset of a business plan, their own app for passive income generation, a clearly articulated pathway to home ownership and sustainable income, and accessible tools for self-regulation to support with confidence, clear thinking, and self-advocacy. The program will create jobs, ensure financial security, decrease homelessness in the long term, and support individuals with creating new pathways for responding to trauma induced triggers. Their responsibility will be to work with HOMEplxce to train ten more entrepreneurs within their communities which expands the reach of the program and keeps them engaged in community. The goal is peer to peer movement style entrepreneurship through liberation arts and economic activism for all LA system-impacted youth.

Since launching this integrative model in 2021, HOMEplxce has supported the Youth Justice Coalition LOBOS team with strategic planning, establishing a clear vision and work plan, monthly retreats that center on transformative justice healing practices for collective growth and individual and team capacity building. We have provided business training through Centro to early-career entrepreneurs and undergone the NACA home-ownership programme. From this, we created the 3-month incubator as an integrative tool with a clear measurable output in the form of the app and weekly accountability via Self-healing Sundays. The launch of the individual apps as a wholly established viable income generating business and the mentorship of new trainees by the grant participants will be a key measure of success. Overall, committing to the entire program and applying the mental-wellness tools by showing up for themselves and their peers will be the ultimate measure of success.