CHANGING THE HOOD FROM INSIDE A PRISON CELL….

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As the founder of the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation, I’ve been fortunate, in that, I was able to raise enough money from the proceeds of my latest book–Domestic Genocide: Institutionalization of Society–to incorporate the organization. Yet we have a ways to go before being able to fund our endowment and programs dedicated to improving the social and economic conditions of underserved communities.

The book is only part of the game plan. Sitting in prison I often think about the things we often take for granted. In respect to resources, everyday I think about how I used to trap out of boarded-up houses and apartment complexes infested with rats and roaches. In time, these properties became eyesores. Today, I think about how the Trap Stars, including myself, fail to understand how, despite their dilapidated condition, these properties were another “whip game” like gold mines waiting to be unearthed. And like gold mining it requires special knowledge and insight.

Our efforts to fund the organizations endowment will hopefully come as part of a proposal to which I’m currently working on.

Currently, we’re looking into developing our pilot program R.E.B.U.I.L.D. with officials in Oklahoma City which we aim to obtain a number of abandoned properties. The organization will then assume responsibility in refurbishing and selling the properties; while creating summer job programs for youth in underserved communities to teach them the A-to-Z in real development, demolition, mortgage, etc. The monies generated from the sale of the properties will then go towards providing scholarships to these children; as well as funding for other nonprofit and grassroot organizations that work to implement violence reduction programs and other such programs that aim to improve the overall social and economic conditions of these communities.

Of the many volunteers I am thankful to have working with the organization, we have a qualified contractor, real estate and mortgage company, nation’s leading re-entry expert Glenn Martin, former director of the David Rothenberg Center for public policy at the Fortune Society and JustLeadership USA.

In addition, for close to a decade I have had the fortunate experience to correspond with and gain invaluable insight from the likes of Harvard professor Alvin Poussaint and many other prominent professors and public officials, including University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Megan McDrew, who has invited me to lecture her sociology students each semester.

Indeed, I am humbled and extremely grateful for their assistance with tacklng the wide range of problems before our communities. For I am but one man who has long since learned that all I have accomplished has been done with the assistance of others.

That said, it is with great humility I ask of you to step up, volunteer, and donate what you can so that we may raise the funds to set the foundation for the community reinvestment program.

Ivan Kilgore 2019

UBF Founder

Google Ivan and find out more about his wrongful conviction, books, radio interviews, YouTube videos, articles, and music. See book trailer to Domestic Genocide at: www.willisraised.wordpress.com

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqVv6_iAaOI]