We were lucky to catch up with Byron Sago recently and have shared our conversation below.

Byron, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I and my wife LaTonya originally started with the idea of delivering a small number of boxes of food to individuals in our community. This idea began to grow larger as the need became more prevalent. So, we went from 10 boxes to 20 boxes delivering them from one of our cars.

As the food insecurity in our community continued to rise, we then saw the need of purchasing a van that would help us serve more people. The need continued to grow, so be purchased a trailer abled to be pulled by the van. We’ve founded ourselves still growing as we’re in need of a larger van to transport more food items to the community.

We identified yet another need at our local schools and began our Brown Box Blessings Program (3B) a program in which once a month during the school year, we deliver boxes of healthy food to adopted schools in the local area, that are given to students who’ve been identified by the administration. This program has expanded from one school to now 12 schools.

Driven by the belief that no one should go hungry, we expanded our outreach and developed innovative solutions to meet people where they are. This vision culminated in the creation of “The Block Market” — a mobile grocery store designed to bring free fresh, and healthy food directly to neighborhoods in need.

I believe today, Blessings On The Block as an organization continues to bridge gaps in access, turning compassion into action and transforming a simple idea into a rolling lifeline for the community.

As I always tell people, “The Work Is Outside The Walls”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Byron Sago was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi. He graduated from Natchez High School in 1993. Byron enlisted in the United States Army in January of 1997 where he served for over 23 years. Throughout his military career, he served at numerous stateside army units as well as in, Stuttgart and Bamberg Germany, Romania, and multiple deployments to Afghanistan.

Byron retired as a First Sergeant in July of 2018. He began his true walk with God in 2010. He was ordained as a Deacon at Bethesda Fellowship Ministries in Copperas Cove, Texas. Pastor B accepted the call to preach in 2012 after a second deployment to Afghanistan and was licensed in July 2014 at Bethesda Fellowship Ministries under the leadership of Bishop (Dr.) R. Ray Gatewood.

On November 8th, 2019 Pastor B founded and established Light Of Hope Fellowship Ministries, an interdenominational church in Harker Heights, Texas. Light Of Hope Fellowship Ministries was founded on Discipleship and to “Take God’s Word To The Streets”.

Byron also known as Pastor B is a Christian Hip Hop artist formed The Grind Don’t Stop For God ™ an independent music label that focuses on spreading the gospel through music.

In August of 2020 Byron and his wife LaTonya founded Blessings On The Block Community Outreach Inc. a 501c3 nonprofit organization that focuses on helping those facing food insecurity throughout the Central Texas area.

“Serving the people is a passion that I have. If I can change the life of just one person facing food insecurity, I believe I’ve been successful.”

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think earning the trust of the people help us. I believe we earned the trust of the people by showing the people that we care about them right where they are.

Any advice for managing a team?

Being that Blessings On The Block is an all-volunteer organization, we allow the volunteers to be themselves and let them know to have fun while serving the community. It may be work loading food and produce into cars but have fun and enjoy it. We let the volunteers know what the goal is and what their responsibilities are, but we allow them to be them, and don’t try to change them. This method has made it much easier for willing volunteers to want to be a part of the organization.

So, if there’s anyone else who may have a vision of serving the community in the realm of food insecurity, allow your volunteers to be who they are and just serve.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blessingsontheblock.org
• Instagram: Blessings On The Block
• Facebook: Blessings On The Block

Image Credits

All photo images courtesy of Cooks Photography Services.