Intro
Broadcasting live from the Business Radio X studios in Dayton, Ohio. It's time for Dayton Business Radio. Now, here's your host.
The Mag
Lee Cantor here, another episode of Dayton Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today I have with me, Moses Mbeseha. And he is with The Conscious Connect. Welcome, Moses.
Moses Mbeseha
Thank you. Thank you, Lee, I appreciate you for having me, I'm excited to be on this call.
The Mag
Sure, for those who don't know, please share a little bit about The Conscious Connect. How are you serving folks?
Moses Mbeseha
The Conscious Connect is a community organization that focuses that has a mission to provide quality opportunities and Education, Culture, health, and peace to the greater Miami Valley. And what we do is we focus primarily and educational opportunities around books on culturally relevant books. And then on the health piece, we've built some parks, some green spaces within the region. And we really focus on providing children who don't have opportunities to coach and relevant books and play opportunities. That's really what we focus on around the greater Miami Valley.
The Mag
Now, how did you come to kind of support these efforts around children's rights? Why did that become important to you?
Moses Mbeseha
It was important to me because, you know, I grew up around literacy, it was a, it was a big thing in my life. And once I once, you know, my business partner, Carlos, came to me and we were talking about, you know, education and those type of things. And, you know, the thought of the book desert, the term book desert became part of our vernacular, and we learned, we did some research and learned about it and, and found out that, you know, kids, kids within impoverished neighborhoods or in poor communities don't have access to high, high quality, culturally relevant literature. So from that perspective, you know, understanding that education and literacy, third-grade reading guarantee, those are all critical things to determining if a child is going to be successful in the future. So, you know, just from that perspective, you know, I just wanted to build something along, my business partner that we felt could have a long-lasting effect on the community. And, you know, with the book deserts, you know, really working towards providing children that access became, you know, our calling card.
The Mag
Now, maybe you can share some advice to other people who want to take on a cause this vast, how did you kind of narrow down what you're going to be able to deliver, and then focus in on that, kind of like a laser beam to really work on that kind of as a priority rather than just getting bogged down by? This seems like a really challenging problem, and you can try to solve lots of it. But you said, let's focus on the literacy side, let's try to kind of solve that.
Moses Mbeseha
Right, you know, there was just a lot of information, you know, and we went to the community, we did a lot of canvassing, we spoke to probably over 100 200, up to 200, business leaders, community leaders, politicians just to get a general consensus on what we're trying to accomplish. And from their understanding that our community or communities for that matter, they have a lot of resources, we kind of looked at it from a resource-based perspective, from an asset base, understanding that there are already things within our community that might be impoverished, that are strong assets that we can utilize. So from that perspective, rather than saying, Oh, we don't have this in our community, or we don't have that in our community, we said, well, we have, you know, 70, barbershops and beauty salons that we could tap into, we have all these different community centers that we could tap into. So we went to them, spoke to them about what we were trying to accomplish, ask them exactly what it is that they wanted to see. And after those listening tours, were able to then, you know, really, really bogged down on what exactly we wanted to accomplish based on feedback from the community.
The Mag
So how did you know you were in the right direction? Like it? What kind of clues did the community give you that said, hey, you know what, this thing's got legs, I think that we have a chance to really make an impact.
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, I mean, at that time, it was, you know, there was a lot of talk around third-grade reading guarantee, you know, just kids who cannot read proficiently by the third grade, are very likely to, you know, there are different indicators for where their life will go after that. So I think just the overall community understands that you know, everywhere you go, people understand fundamentally what education means. And I think when, you know, we were also providing, we're offering to provide free resources to meet that need. So you know, I think that the community just kind of rallied around that and they were very receptive and they were the ones that haven't told us where to put the books and how many they might need. So, you know, the feedback we got from the community was very positive. We rarely ever got on people telling us to know what people are telling us. This won't work. Everywhere we went, it was oh my god, thank you guys for coming. Anything you can do to help us please bring it here. So from that perspective, that's how we knew we were on the right track because we're getting general consensus from pretty much everywhere we went.
The Mag
Now, have you been able to get investment by some of the businesses in the area where they're actually supporting the organization?
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, you know, we receive a lot of support from the region, from the regional area from some of the larger foundations, some, some business some businesses with, with their foundations have also given us money. So yeah, we've received most of our funding, I would say, has come from, from local, from local, just regular, everyday people. And a lot of it is also not, you know, financial, we've received a lot of, in-kind resources, a lot of sweat equity, which has gone into advance in the mission, just the same. So we've gotten a lot of just general investment from the overall community. Absolutely.
The Mag
And has the pandemic affected any of your work?
Moses Mbeseha
A little bit. But I think that the pandemic is, you know, as it is what everybody else is really forcing us to be more efficient is really forcing us to think outside the box for how we can really meet the needs of our community that we're trying to serve, you know, with a global pandemic, things like this happening, it exacerbates the problem, even more, it presents our organization in a position where, you know, we're needed much more than what we even believed before. So the pandemic has changed us for the better because it has forced us to create programming that is even more targeted to meet the needs of the community.
The Mag
So now, what do you need more of right now from the community? Do you need more books? Do you need more money? Do you need more kinds of kids that raise their hand and say, Hey, I'd like to read better? What do you need?
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, absolutely. You know, first and foremost, you know, we're kind of in a big fundraising campaign throughout this year to develop, like, so we're really in the process of really building out a park in Springfield. So we're, we're doing a huge fundraising campaign, we're probably gonna need anywhere between 50 to $70,000 to complete that project. So yeah, we need a lot of that we're really asking for, for parents, you know, who have children who may not be able to read well, or community organizations where they have a lot of children that are coming in, they're absolutely, like, we need those people to reach out to us because we're trying to better efficiently meet their needs. So, kids who need books, we're doing programs, now we're, we're we're sending books, directly to families and to children, you know, to, to their parents based off of themes that they actually like. So we're trying to meet that need now. So anyway that people can, can do that, whether that's given us kids who can do that, or leading us towards resources, where we can raise a staggering amount of money?
The Mag
Can you share a story about how this organization has made an impact on one of those kids? Like maybe somebody who hadn't been reading well, and all of a sudden now their voracious reader?
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, you know, absolutely, you know, we have a, we, we run a program, we run a mentorship program, where we work with kids, you know, about twice a month, and we help them with the reading and things like that. So there's about 20 kids, 20 kids in that group. And I would say, at least a third of them, you know, well, we made the group very diversified, where there were kids who were, you know, better readers, some kids who were low on the reading scale. So I would say the kids who are low on the reading skill, have had significant improvement, and how they can read and just also a better cultural understanding of who they are and what they're reading. Absolutely.
The Mag
And then, when you were doing this kind of work, and you see the kid's face, when all of a sudden, now they have this whole world of books and reading in front of them, that must be so rewarding.
Moses Mbeseha
Ah man, that's, I think that's the most fulfilling part, especially now that we're selling. We're sending books directly to parents and to kids, to their homes. You know, we're getting feedback from from from parents, like, you know, my son is gonna love this, or my daughter has to read this book, these five books is sent to us never read it five times over. So when we get that when we get those messages, which we get them every week, you know, just like that, just that general excitement, I think that's what makes it worth it. Understanding that we know even if it's one kid, that it's if it's reaching them, and it changes their worldview, then that's, that's really all that matters.
The Mag
So now, how do you see the organization growing? What's next for you guys?
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, you know, when we started, you know, we really just wanted to end book deserts in the state of Ohio. By 2021, that was kind of our mission. But you know, as we've grown, as we've provided others resources, we start to find out like, as I mentioned, early health is a major problem. Food is a major problem pieces of the major problem. So our organization is kind of our mission has grown so over the next 25 years, you know, we're really focused on the whole of the community, in developing what we call children's equity zones where, you know, we're able to provide resources that meet their needs unequivocally. So that's what's next for us is that we continue to be strong advocates, and we continue to partner with organizations around the community that can meet health needs that can meet safety needs that can meet as much as and also continue to meet education needs. So that's, that's where we are now we're expanding, we're growing. And we hope that over the next three to five years, we can meet the needs of many more people in the community in a more efficient way, as well.
The Mag
Well, tell us about that declaration of children's rights, what are the kind of tenants of that?
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, you know, the declaration of children's rights, you know, we wanted to, as we're looking at our mission, you know, education, culture, health, and peace, you know, we looked at other organizations, whether that was the United Nations and their, their children's, right, and as I mentioned earlier, when we're talking about equity zones, you know, under those four tenants, education, culture, health, and peace, we didn't want it to develop programming around those, and then have our community, you know, be advocates around each of those in whatever way they see fit.
So, you know, the declaration of children's rights is just a way for us to put all of those under one umbrella, and then give people the opportunity or give regular community members the opportunity to say, you know, I pledge to support the community and health, by you know, picking up trash at the park, I pledged to, to help the community in education by, you know, a hosting a free little library in front of my house or being responsible for restocking, each library within my neighborhood with books that we provide so on the declaration of children's rights, essentially, is activating the community to take action in a way that best sees that they see that the best see fit within those four tenants that we've created on their admission.
The Mag
So if somebody wanted to learn more and get involved with the organization, what's the website?
Moses Mbeseha
Yeah, you know, our website is www.theconsciousconnect.org. So that, you know, people can reach us out there. We have social media, you know, four different social media platforms, so people can reach us there as well. Well, yeah, these are things that we promote, on our website, and as well as, as well on our social media. So people have the capacity to reach out to us to learn more. And we also have a pledge page on our website where they can sign up, they can take the pledge, and then let us know what it is that they're interested in advocating for. And then we'll reach out to them and try to provide them the resources and the direction for them to start doing that.
The Mag
Well, Moses, thank you so much for sharing your story. You're doing important work in the community.
Moses Mbeseha
Thank you so much, Lee. I really appreciate you having us, for having me.
The Mag
And once again, if people want to learn more to donate to volunteers, all the good stuff is on their website, theconsciousconnect.org. Thank you again, Moses.
Moses Mbeseha
Thank you so much, Lee.
The Mag
All right. This is Lee Canter. We will see you all again next time on Dayton Business Radio.
Image source: https://www.facebook.com/TheConsciousConnect.org/photos/1795523620699686/
