Learning ways to hack the system is the key to living the lives we deserve to live.
Atnre Alleyne is the founder of The Proximity Project, where he advocates for diversity and inclusion and helps organizations build authentic connections with marginalized communities. Founding multiple advocacy organizations, Atnre is an impassioned leader that empowers other leaders with equity-centered values as he fights for racial justice.
Despite the dependence on funding that many advocacy groups have, the system is designed to hand over resources to the most privileged, so it's imperative that we build communities that can help strengthen us. In order to move forward in a healthy and sustainable direction, we need to innovate new ways to apply ourselves because many of these organizations are filled with people doing superhuman levels of work.
We have to hack the system to fight inequality and design new cultures and spaces so we can continue to fight for the community in a system that is inherently oppressive and inequitable. If it is no longer serving us to wait for blessings from founders to fix the problems with the world, we need self-determination and to lead with our hearts, so we can make our dreams of an equitable future a reality!
👦🏾 Growing up in New Jersey as the youngest of five children: his unusual name and his mother's influence on him.
02:25🇬🇭 Going to boarding school in Ghana: empowering communities and fighting for social justice.
05:51🎯 Travelling abroad provided him with an understanding of all perspectives: finding yourself and things that are really important.
11:55🎓 Helping marginalized groups get the best education: the reason why Atnre created an advocacy organization.
15:28😇 Tatiana and Atnre founded TeenSHARP: the difference between having a big national brand connected to an advocacy organization vs a grassroots organization.
20:35⚡ Events in 2020 made him write a lot about the racial justice front: the Proximity Project as a critical, foundational piece that was missing.
24:31💸 From non-profit to profit founder: work in communities of color in the nonprofit space is being hindered, hampered, and undercut due to dependency on funding.
32:06✌🏾 Philanthropy imbalance: two important tips for non-profit founders.
36:37🇺🇦 Atnre’s experience with Pahara, and moving to Ukraine and having an amazing life.
41:44⭐ Spaces for re-invention: seeing different cultures is giving us easier insight into the core of who we are and what really matters.
49:083️⃣ Three questions to ask in interviews.
53:01💎 Atnre’s RONdering: how to hack the system to have true power, true agency, and self-determination.
54:54✍🏾 Atnre’s project and new book: The Guide to Starting and Growing a Nonprofit in an Unjust World.
57:47Links:
Episode 15
