ATTAIN/THE OUT OF THE BOX INITIATIVE COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT Interviewed By: Urban Experience Magazine Tell us about your nonprofit? ATTAIN/The Out of the Box Initiative was started at the end of 2020/2021; we are a 501(C) (3) nonprofit. It was created as a permanent continuation of the work I did in Norwalk BLM, along with the others of that group. At the end of 2020, I proposed The Out of The Box Initiative to my friend Pascha Morgan, the basic idea was that it would be a community library about the cultures, histories, and ideas of people of color. Together we came up with the idea to make them 120 sq. tiny libraries that housed a plethora of books from infant to adult. With interactive play areas on and around the library. However, Pascha, and I did not want to just stop there so we created ATTAIN, a nonprofit that would be the umbrella of all our projects. Our targeted focus is serving underrepresented communities through food and housing security, education, medical and mental health care. Our name comes from the definition Attain, which means: to reach, achieve or accomplish; gain; obtain. To attain one’s goals. To come to or arrive at, especially after some labor or tedium. To put it simply, love is a superpower and we believe that if we all pitch in; we can change the world around us. What made you want to give back to the community? JAKE: I had done prior community work, and worked in the medical field. I have always had a passion for helping people, but I was not interested in changing the way the world was, but rather doing what I could through medicine and compassion. However, when I was falsely arrested in 2020 during the George Floyd Protests by the Des Moines Police Department; I was hurt pretty seriously. I was beaten with batons, put in positions my body could not handle, due to injuries I have sustained to my body. I had to defend my innocence for speaking out against injustice against my community. It was not the first time I had bad experiences because I was a person of color, but that moment was the moment I was not going to be mistreated again, and I was going to do everything in my power to prevent them from happening to anyone else. I joined and led Norwalk BLM after my release from jail, and then created ATTAIN with Pascha later on that year and into 2021. PASCHA: I have a little brother who was born when I was about 10. When he was a baby, my mom would read him a book called "What if everyone did it"... In this book, it was things like the little boy would throw something out the window, and the mom would say what if everyone did it and you would turn the page and it would be trash piled up. It went on like that. For me though, it made an impression on me as a kid but it kind of was flipped upside down so I live my life as if what if everyone did it. I may only be able to feed a 100 people, but what if everyone did it? I may be able to shelter 25
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