We recently connected with Dante Plush and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Dante, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

So for work, I run a youth engagement program where I’m supposed to get young people around the world to participate in giving, community service, and making change. However, I have creative control over an overwhelming majority of my work so the result of my program’s efforts seem to materialize differently than one would expect. Because most of my organization’s press currently tends to revolve around one big day of the year, the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving we call “Giving Tuesday”, that’s when my program tends to really show results. On Giving Tuesday, most people give by donating money to causes that matter to them. Obviously, most kids, regardless of socioeconomic status, don’t have money to give to causes, so my program instead of measuring dollars donated by kids, my program measures impact based on how many kids around the world do an act of kindness on that day or pledge to do an act of kindness on that day. So this past Giving Tuesday, after all was said and done, under my leadership, my program saw over 101,607 young people (that we know of) do or pledge to do an act of kindness or community service on the day! This was of course due to the combined effort of my Spark Leaders (they’re kind of like my youth engagement ambassadors/influencers), the different iterations of my program in different countries around the world, partner organizations getting young people to participate on the day, and random young people around the world who I’ve never known of before seeing our mission and feeling inspired to join in. This was meaningful to me because it finally showed pay off in all of the hard work I’ve been putting in for the last few years, it made organizations take my program seriously and want to partner, it was done on close to zero budget (proving money isn’t entirely necessary to make big change), it was done in a way so that even kids who’s families don’t have great economic situations (like most of the kiddos I used to teach back in the Bronx) could participate and wasn’t limited to rich, privileged kids, and because I’m the only person that I know that can say that they led a program to an impactful result like this. And an added benefit is that the Spark Leaders were so inspired by this result that they want to aim to get 1 Million young people around the world activated this year, which in turn motivates me and shows that I’m doing something right with my leadership and program!

Dante, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Well my name is Dante Plush. I don’t really know what word to use to label myself besides “inspiring individual” I guess. I grew up super poor on the Jersey shore but my saving grace was that my single mom was able to find a house in a middle class suburb that accepted section 8 assistance, so I was therefore able to reap the benefits of my town’s very good school system. My dad was never in the picture, and after my mom passed in 2019, I discovered that this was my mom’s decision. Apparently my dad was a drug dealer and my mom’s supplier. She was told she wasn’t ever going to be able to get pregnant, so when she realized that she somehow was pregnant with me, she actually made the decision to be a single mother, probably because she wanted to leave the drugs behind and not mess up this pregnancy, and my dad obviously wouldn’t have been a good influence if he was in the picture. Usually, being a single mother has negative connotations to it, but in this case, I don’t think my life would’ve turned out the way it did if my mom hadn’t made the decision that she did. She was a very strong woman. Despite this, I still had a lot of family issues growing up for whatever reason. Sometimes I feel like it was due to the poverty that we dealt with and mental health issues that must’ve stemmed from my mom’s struggle with staying off of drugs. These family issues eventually got so bad that I ended up being homeless, couch surfing and sleeping in my car for a while, starting right before I turned 18 and lasting for over a year. Now, I don’t bring this all up because I want people’s pity–I bring all of this up because it’s important to the work I do now and informs the decisions I’ve made to get me to where I am. After I finished college to become a teacher and got my master’s degree, I opted to go teach in the Bronx because I thought my aforementioned past experiences would make me of more use there, than in super rich Westchester County, NY, where I went to college and student taught. I got a job as a middle school teacher in a title 1 school in the South Bronx, in one of the poorest districts in the entire country. And let’s just say, once I started teaching, I realized I was not prepared for what I’d be dealt. The norm for students was being chronically absent from school, refusing to do their classwork/homework and not caring about the consequences (and not having parent’s who cared either), and coming into middle school with literacy rates well below grade level. On top of that, for some students, the only meal they got each day was the free lunch they got at school. Some students lived in homeless shelters and that made it difficult for them to get to school on time or do homework. Some students only spoke and understood languages other than english and spanish, so the only tools made available to help them learn was google translate, which obviously resulted in a loss of learning. Some students weren’t doing well in school and their parents refused to come in and see how they can help because they were afraid of getting picked up by I.C.E. I even had a student who’s mom was picked up and deported and this pretty much took a tool on her educational progress, financial situation, and mental health for the rest of the school year. I began to refer to these issues as “educational barriers” and set out to do something about them because I felt that I could try to be the best teacher I could be, and it still wouldn’t help when preteens are dealing with issues like these. My advocacy started pretty simple–I did Facebook fundraisers on my birthday for local community based organizations that helped address educational barriers like the ones that my students faced. The social good team at Facebook eventually picked up on my fundraisers and began featuring me in commercials, media campaigns, and cool internal opportunities, one in which I was able to meet Sheryl Sandberg and advocate to her about Facebook tools that could help student’s like mine. I even eventually got the social good team to come out to my school, talk to my students about jobs in tech and perseverance, but also to listen to them about their daily lives. Also, in addition to this visit, Facebook decided to make a $10,000 donation to my school. That’s when I knew that I was actually capable of making change in the world. Anyways, the Facebook social good team invited me to speak about my story at a press conference in 2019, where they were announcing that they were doing a $7 Million match for GivingTuesday. The GivingTuesday headquarters team was actually in the audience there and eventually asked me to take the role of their Director of Youth Engagement and lead their new, small youth engagement program called “GivingTuesdayKids” at the time. I took the job only on the condition that I’d be able to use it to help kiddos like the ones I was teaching in the Bronx and have had creative control over most of my work since then. So now, I’ve rebranded the program to GivingTuesdaySpark in an effort to appeal to teens and young adults too and have geared the program to promote non monetary generosity among young people so even the kiddos that I taught in the Bronx could participate. I also gear the program to deal in youth led generosity, meaning I use my program to support my spark leaders instead of telling them what to do, and a lot of the time, if they come up with ideas that they think will make change, I’ll work with them to make those ideas reality. I prefer this approach because as a teacher, I know that the best way to engage students, but also to get them to learn and retain concepts is hands on learning and project based learning, and letting them see the impact of their work in real time. And to me, letting kids lead and have these experiences is teaching them how to advocate for themselves and make change, and I firmly believe that the way to help young people overcome barriers is to teach them how to advocate for themselves. I may not be using my program to directly impact kids I taught in the Bronx, or directly impact the Bronx in general, but I’ve engineered it with them in mind every step of the way and it shows in how the program’s turned out. For example, I’ve strategically picked and kept around Spark Leaders who participate in giving like helping feed the homeless and give them toiletries, promote literacy and stem among at-risk youth (with a priority towards black and brown youth), provide support and services to foster kids (and foster kids who have aged out of the program), and provide tools and resources to young people who are dealing with trauma. A good chunk of my Spark Leaders are black and brown youth from inner cities. Some of my Spark Leaders are everyday kids who don’t have much media attention or ambitions for media attention or changing the world and just like doing small acts of generosity for whatever reason. And finally, I have a leader who came to me last year with an idea for something called “Operation Inspiring America” which was a tour of schools where we talked to students about making change and had them engage in quick community service projects. We helped this leader make this idea into a reality and brought Operation Inspire America to Chicago where the Spark Leaders engaged 7 schools (most of which were filled with at-risk, black and brown youth who faced educational barriers) and almost 3000 young people. This project was close to my heart because it was the efforts of a teenager that I mentor, and it allowed me to get back in touch, face to face, with kiddos like the ones I used to teach in the Bronx. It gave me an opportunity to use my teacher skills in real time, and gave many at-risk youths their first experience with advocacy and giving by allowing them to participate in giving by packing toiletry bags for those in need. Some students at schools also ended up taking some of the bags for people who they knew who needed them and this was important to us because it was already an example of the kiddos applying what they learned from out tour and giving to those in need, even if they didn’t have much of their own to give. To me, I saw little Dante who’s family was also on government assistance and food stamps, realizing that he didn’t always have to be the recipient of giving, but also could give to others, even if he didn’t have much to give, and that was important to me. My program also tries its best to support the Spark Leaders leaders in ways that other youth engagement organizations often don’t with youth leaders and changemakers. While many youth engagement orgs will fund kid projects, oftentimes this is temporary and the following year, they won’t fund them anymore and will move on to the next inspiring kid of the year. In my opinion, a lot of youth engagement initiatives just see young changemakers like my Spark Leaders as photo ops and media opportunities and fail to realize that outside of their inspiring actions, they have their own struggles too. And if not addressed and talked out, these issues can act as barriers to the changemakers success, just like educational barriers can act as barriers to student success. So I try make the program into a family atmosphere where spark leaders and parents can reach out to us and talk about whatever they need to, and while I cannot offer more support than I’d like to, oftentimes, having a listening and understanding ear, sending cheer up gifts, and talking to Spark Leaders and their parents about how I can tailor the leader’s experience in the program to help them through their current situation really is helpful to the leaders. That support outside of the work is what I feel is missing from most other youth engagement organizations. To me, this is the equivalent of trying to address what’s going on in a student’s life outside of school to help them do well in school. Sorry, I gave a lot, but it was all a lot of necessary points and details and stuff lol Oh also, I think that what’s important about my work and what sets me apart is that I’m determined to stay on task and not waiver from my goal of helping at-risk youth overcome barriers. I’ve realized that a lot of people turn their back on where they came from or their initial motivations or missions once they get into positions of privilege like mine and I refuse to let that happen to myself because it would feel inauthentic and like I was just using struggling youth for clout and attention until I didn’t need them anymore. It may not be obvious at first but you can see direct correlations between my childhood and life, and my goals as an adult advocate, how I run my youth engagement program, and the decisions I make, and in my opinion, that isn’t the norm out here in this professional world.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think how I made it through the homelessness in general was probably a good story on resilience. I made it to college but still had to drive back home to the Jersey Shore to make money to support myself because I made more money there at my Wawa that I had worked at in high school than I could making minimum wage in the jobs around my college. So when I had to drive down to work, sometimes I could sleep over at friend’s houses if their parents allowed it but after a while, most of the time, they didn’t (in hindsight, I’ve been informed that many times, it was because I’m gay and it made them uncomfortable because they didn’t want me influencing their boys). So on nights when I had nowhere to sleep, I slept in my car and washed up in the McDonald’s bathroom in the neighborhood that I grew up in because I didn’t want my job to know what I was going through and fire me. At first it was discouraging, but then it eventually made me use my situation to step into fields of work and experience for the sake of having housing. For example, in my freshman year of college, I got a job working new student orientation over the summer, which meant I got housing to stay on campus for the summer. There was still about a month time period afterwards when I had to couch surf or sleep in my car until I could move into my dorm for the new school year, but I still considered this a huge win. This gave me work and stable housing which was huge for me, and I continued doing this until I eventually had stable housing when school wasn’t in session, living with my Uncle Al. I continued working new student orientation programs at my school though because it gave me a lot of professional and youth engagement experience that I still use today in my current role. There was a point where I almost dropped out and joined the military because it didn’t seem realistic to me–making it through college homeless and without parental support or even money to afford my books for classes, and if I would’ve gone through with that, my life would’ve turned out radically different and I probably wouldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing today. But at the time it was appealing because in the army, I’d at least be making consistent money and I’d have a stable place to lay my head.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Hmmm. I think being that my work revolves around kids, helping make change for youth, and social media, people expect me to be this perfect, Disney character who has never done anything wrong and has never had struggles, and who’s life and work looks super amazing. I quite frankly do my best to fight against that. I’m open with my youth leaders, their parents, and most people that I meet or who see me on social media about my current and past struggles. I’m not a perfect social media influencer even though I have the story of one. I struggle with depression. I have bad body image issues. I used to be a pretty crappy person to those around me because I thought it was okay to take out my anger from homelessness and having family issues on others. Heck, when I was meeting with people who were considering hiring me for my current role, I told them that one of the reasons I was going out of the way to do my advocacy work is because I thought it would help make up for how badly I’d treated people in the past (which I late realized is absolutely not true). Also, outside of work, I do stand-up comedy across the country. I don’t joke about vulgar or crazy offensive stuff, but at the same time, when you think of people who work with kids, you don’t think of stand-up comedians. I think most non-creatives would look at me and be like “why are you tarnishing your image and brand?” My response to that is multifaceted: For one, people like watching my story and work because they think I’m relatable. People have watched me go from being an everyday middle school teacher to a global youth engagement program director and work with youth on other continents. I didn’t just pop up out of nowhere–they watched my struggles, ups and downs, mistakes, and growing pains along the way and that makes me seem real, and while I may not have a huge following like a social media influencer, I have a following who I can mobilize in the real world when I need them. As well, today, public figures try putting up these fronts like they’re perfect so they’ll appeal to you and you’ll want to be them, but then once people realize that they’re flawed and have done crappy things in their past, they oftentimes quickly turn on them or even sometimes cancel them. To me, quite a few times, people being cancelled has been warranted, but a lot of times, they haven’t been. For me, ya’ll have already known that I’ve messed up and haven’t been a perfect person and have my own current struggles and do things that you wouldn’t expect of people who work with kids like stand-up comedy, so if you choose to follow along on my story and work, you’ve already decided that you’d give me a chance despite all of that. Next, being a flawed person but still being able to make an impact on the world makes other people feel like they can make change too and doesn’t just limit making change to only those who are perfect. Finally, trying to look perfect all of the time to appeal to your audience will take a real toll on you mentally and physically, especially as time goes on and you get older. As a creative, I’d rather prioritize my mental health and taking care of myself over selling myself as a product to an audience because I believe that my influence will last longer that way and I’ll be able to naturally grow and evolve, instead of engineering myself to grow and evolve according to what my audience wants to see and then eventually snap under the pressure and potentially tarnish my work. Maybe I’m wrong, but for now, my method seems to be working for me.