I am excited to announce the twenty-five winners of our $1K grants! Get to know our grant recipients below by listening to them tell you what the $1K grant means to them and/or what change they are making in the world with their business.
The ParentPreneur Foundation's impact
This is our sixth round of $1K grants and makes $95K we gave away since we started in July of 2020 with a $50,000 seed grant from Techstars co-founder and venture capitalist, Brad Feld.
The thing we accomplished that I am most thankful for is paying for three hundred and twenty mental therapy sessions for the members of our foundation. Mental health is historically stigmatized in the Black community and we pass down mental trauma from one generation to the next. But we are stopping this negative cycle for our community members and helping them leave a legacy of mental wealth!
Another great thing we recently did was to partner with Techstars for Valentine's Day and take over Stonks.com for Stonks' first-ever all-women, all-Black-women pitch event. Stonks is like if Angel List + Twitch + Shark Tank had a baby, where investors make a commitment in real-time during the entrepreneur's virtual pitch.
Jennifer Jaki Johnson is in the Techstars Atlanta social impact accelerator, and Veronica Woodruff just raised $750K for her startup.
Community Is At The Heart Of Everything We Do
The most important thing we do is build community. We have a group of 1,800 Black ParentPreneurs who have each other's backs and all of them want to leave a legacy for their beautiful Black children.
Announcing the ParentPreneur Foundation's next twenty-five recipients of the Sugar Plum Grant
Our grant is called the Sugar Plum Grant, named after my dog, Sugar, that I had to put down after ten beautiful years of companionship. Sugar was the most loving, loyal, and consistent being I ever met. With these $1K grants, I pray for love, loyalty, and consistency for each recipient.
Winston Daley - Agogos Agogos is a digital hiring platform and community for educators of color that provides a vehicle for schools to connect with highly sought-after BIPOC educators.
Rita Brooks - Palmly
Palmly is a mobile platform where people build community and grow in faith together; it helps churches increase their engagement and grow their impact.
Tasha Yarborough & her daughter, Brooklyn - Brooklyn's Bookmarks
Brooklyn's Bookmarks provides fun and artistic bookmarks that have a purpose; they are functional placeholders, but they also help improve reading comprehension, emotional expression, and business acumen.
Aidah Aliyah Rasheed - Visitor Visitor provides death preparedness resources for Muslim Americans and their loved ones.
Jonathan White - Hood Medicine
Hood Medicine is a non-profit that helps disseminate public health education and information to Black and Brown communities in a unique way.
Akissi Stokes - WunderGrubs
WunderGrubs is a tech-enabled social enterprise that converts mealworms into a high-value protein to meet the demand of aquaculture farmers for a clean, high-performing and affordable aquafeed.
Lisa Parker - Favored Fabulous & Fly Boutique
I encourage women to break out of their fashion comfort zone (their norm) to look good and feel good; I do this by offering affordable high-quality clothing to elevate their wardrobe.
Keith Chaney - Peadbo
Peadbo is an advisory board management platform for individuals, not businesses.
Donna Wise - InXpress
InXpress supports small to mid-size e-commerce, wholesale, and import/export businesses with personalized, concierge shipping services and discounts, based on our volumes, not theirs. We take the work and worry off their plates for anything from domestic and international envelopes and small packages to large, heavy equipment and machinery.
Elle Cole - Sickle Cell Books
Elle writes books for families of children living with Sickle Cell Disease. Through Elle's blog and advocacy work, she empowers parents and makes sure children receive adequate healthcare.
Martin Pratt - YourBlackNews
YourBlackNews offers nightly Black news covering grants, politics, tech, health, books, farming, cannabis, and more.
Kim Roxie - LAMIK Beauty
LAMIK Beauty is a tech-enabled clean (non-toxic) beauty makeup brand catering to women with diverse skin tones.
Latanya Farrar - Heart & Soul Wellness Solutions
Heart and Soul Wellness Solutions offers individual therapeutic services to adults struggling with grief/loss, life transitions, and trauma utilizing a holistic approach that considers the mind, body, and soul.
Jamie Newton-Knight - Blended Black Family
Jamie is a blended family and co-parenting coach, helping moms heal so they can co-parent with ease. Her mission is to dispel the myth that Black parents can't co-parent without drama.
Caryn Clopton - Excel Cleaning Services
Excel is a full-service commercial cleaning company servicing the Metro Nashville, TN area focusing on cleaning for health and providing essential workers with the support they need to continue to show up daily.
Theodore Harvey - SynsorMed
SynsorMed is a digital health company that provides culturally relevant healthcare for underserved communities that traditionally lack support at home.
Stephanie Ayler - Nourish & Love
Nourish and Love is a spa-centric product line that is carefully curated and formulated with integrity for kinky and coily hair.
Flo Elkins - L.I.F.T. to Lose
L.I.F.T. to Lose provides fitness training and wellness coaching to Women 40+ who have a desire to lose weight, keep it off long-term and live a healthier lifestyle through holistic wellness and strength training.
Erica Battle - Life Changes in Progress Educational Consulting
Life Changes in Progress Educational Consulting provides consulting to schools and school districts to provide teachers and leaders the tools, strategies, and resources needed to help increase positive relationships and student engagement.
Leah Freeman-Haskin - BLK Oceans
BLK Oceans is a website that inspires readers to celebrate Black founders and to discover and explore quality Black-owned businesses in fashion, lifestyle, beauty, and kids. Through in-depth interviews with founders, engaging editorial content, bold imagery, and a voice for the modern audience, BLK Oceans showcases the best in Black-owned brands.
Nicole Lee - Warrior Moms
Warrior Moms counsels single moms and entrepreneurs at the ideation stage; it offers an online course that includes a stipend.
Keena Saxon - Kidogo TV
For parents, educators, and daycare institutions, kidogo.tv offers curated videos, interactive activities, and live programming for young children. All of Kidogo TV's multimedia content highlights the cultures of the African Diaspora.
Tamara Irving - Creating your signature arts program
Tamara helps develop arts curricula and facilitate teacher training and professional development programs infused with career and leadership practices for a range of organizations.
Wayne Stewart - Stewart Design Agency
Stewart Design Agency is a full-service digital agency with over fourteen years of experience designing and building custom internet-based applications. They provide digital branding, web application design/development, web application hosting, social media, and more.
LeShawnda Fitzgerald - Ready For Spanish
Ready For Spanish introduces children and families to Spanish through an online learning program.
There you have it! Please join me in congratulating our twenty-five ParentPreneur winners of the Sugar Plum grant!
If our mission to empower Black ParentPreneurs, so they can leave a legacy for their beautiful Black children resonates with you, please make a tax-deductible donation; as little as $25 makes a big difference and every penny counts. If you are a Black ParentPreneur, please join our online community.
Ad astra. 🚀 Hugs,
James
CEO