Two Nights With Our For Our Youth Partners

Our 5% For Our Youth initiative is built into every purchase: a portion of our profits goes to organizations serving young people across the country. Most days, that support happens behind the scenes. Over the past few months, we got to celebrate it in person at milestone events for two of our partners, Youth Guidance in Chicago and The Black Man Can in New York City.

Celebrating Bright Futures with Youth Guidance

We were proud to join Youth Guidance in Chicago as a Platinum Sponsor of the Bright Futures Gala, celebrating 25 years of Becoming A Man (BAM) and 15 years of Working on Womanhood (WOW).

Anniversaries like these are really about the people behind the numbers. Nearly 13,000 young people across Chicago have come through Youth Guidance programs and built the confidence and emotional footing to succeed in school and well beyond it.

Still, the best moments of the night didn't come from a stat sheet. They came from students and alumni sharing their own stories. You can talk about mentorship in the abstract all evening; nothing lands like a young person telling a room, in their own words, what it meant to have someone in their corner.

Honoring Excellence at The Black Man Can Awards

In New York City, we co-sponsored The Black Man Can Awards. The event celebrates the brilliance, humanity, and potential of Black men and boys while recognizing leaders creating meaningful change in their communities.

Our Co-Founder and Chief Values Officer, Rod Johnson, presented scholarships to four young men recognized through the Campus King Scholar and Black Boy Genius Scholar programs, each honored for academic achievement, leadership, and service. Watching them accept those scholarships, it was hard to miss the point: this is who the work is for.

Continuing the Work

We left both evenings grateful, and clearer than ever about why we built giving into our business model instead of bolting it on. Organizations like Youth Guidance and The Black Man Can do the day-in, day-out work of showing up for young people. Our job is to help make sure they can keep doing it.

That's where you come in. Every BLK & Bold purchase fuels the 5% that supports these partners. Your morning cup helps a student in Chicago find a mentor and a scholar in New York pay for school. Thank you for being part of it.