Support Promising Homeless Student at CHISEL Home

Dear Community Collaborators and Supporters,

We are asking for your support for a special and very unique, but necessary intervention for a young man who needs us to partner for his best success and opportunity. This young man has been surviving and dealing with a set of unfortunate circumstances and needs our collective intervention and redirection to stabilize and launch his success. We are writing to ask for your help in creating this much needed and unique intervention.

Meet Jabari, a 17-year-old, creative and innovative young man who is full of life and enormous potential despite his unfortunate circumstances. He is currently homeless and living from home to home with caring individuals for intermittent time periods. Jabari has been in and out of foster care and abandoned by one social program after another, spit out by one system after another. Never having any consistent caring adults to guide him to be his best self led him to navigating as best he could; and then he got into trouble for trying to steal food and is now on probation. While systems designed to help vulnerable children are underfunded and over-taxed, the criminal legal system overfunctions. The government that lacked resources to protect him is sure to have a jail bed for him. We will not allow that to happen.

We aim to provide support and care for Jabari to become an exceptional human being, a shining light, and a positive contributor in our community. Jabari maintains solid grades, excels at basketball, and displays a positive attitude despite his circumstances.

The Choosing Higher Intellect Starts Elevated Living (CHISEL) Collective LLC is the unique solution Jabari needs. CHISEL focuses on Emotional Intelligence, Mental and Emotional Development, Financial Literacy, and Mentorship to build independence skills, goal setting and achievement, community service, and a keen understanding of self and society as the foundations of building a strong sense of self-worth.

Our plan is to provide a positive, nurturing, and supportive environment for Jabari to thrive. This starts with securing safe, stable housing in the Brighton school district that will facilitate, improved student engagement, and greater opportunity and resources. This proposed residence will include direct care, supervision, and modeling provided by an expert adult.

Jabari will receive mentoring, employment, and critically needed life guidance, support, and supervision.

We are asking CHISEL "Founders" of this first home for an annual commitment of $3,000, or $250/per month to provide housing, food, clothing, and everyday essential living expenses for this young man. Any contribution will be greatly appreciated.

Our goal is to raise $36,000 for this initiative. Considering in state prisons, New York spends an average of over $315 a day, or nearly $115,000 per year, to incarcerate one person, we believe this is a bargain.*

As we embark on this non-traditional intervention, transparency is key to building trust and confidence. Therefore, all expenses will be tracked and reported monthly to the funders and supporters involved.

Thank you in advance for your consideration of support and contributions towards creating stability and opportunity for this special young man. Please know that we welcome additional conversation, questions, and strategy as we truly desire to surround Jabari with many examples of success and support.

The CHISEL Collective

*https://www.vera.org/the-cost-of-incarceration-in-new-york-state#