We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Danielle Battle. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Danielle below.

Hi Danielle, thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

When my husband and I began RICH – Restoring Inner City Hope, INC. we were only focused on doing our part to give back to the Cherry Hill community of Baltimore where my husband was born and raised. We spent several years just focusing on being an in place resource to the residents and supporting where we could. In our 8th year of operating I went back to school to get a professional certification in nonprofit management, and we were approached by the then principal of the local elementary/middle school, Tracey Garrett, saying that she needed an afterschool program for her middle school boys that needed the most support. We worked with Principal Garrettt and other community leaders and secured a physical space for our programming. This was months before COVID hit and we ended up using our space, along with a handful of other non profits in our building, as a hub for fresh meals, shelf stable food, meat, fresh bread and produce. Once we were able to have students in the building we began our afterschool leadership program with 6 young men, spaced out in our room. Today we have over 80 young men and women on our roster, a thriving summer program and just opened a juice bar that will house our youth workforce development program, giving a cohort of 10 youth an opportunity to lean about entrepreneurship, food industry skills, and financial advocacy.

The youth workforce development program evolved out of one of our afterschool classes. We worked with our students to learn about financial literacy through the lens of an entrepreneur. Over the years our students explored t-shirt printing, developing a bike courier service and then juicing. The students got very interested in the juicing, creating recipes, learning about purchasing produce and more. Because of the uptick in interest we felt this was a great way to not only expand our programming but to also bring healthy food choices to the Cherry Hill neighborhood which is currently a food desert.

We were able to acquire a location in the shopping center in the middle of the neighborhood that required a great deal of work. We rallied locals residents and supported to raise a great deal of money. Then we had to form partnerships with people to teach us about managing a construction project, and creating juices and running a juice bar. We were learning right alongside our students.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, and came to BaLtiMore to attend Morgan State University for my undergraduate degree. I then began a career in education. While a teacher and administrator I intentionally chose to work in schools that were in communities that had been heavily impacted by racism and poverty.

I later met the cofounder of RICH and he introduced me to the Cherry Hill neighborhood of BaLtiMore. Even though I still work in the education field, working with teachers and school leaders across the country to enhance math classes, my passion is building all of the arms of the RICH program to reach even farther than South BaLtiMore.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

The other cofounder of RICH is actually my husband. We began this journey over 12 years ago while we were just dating. I think it can be hard for married couples to run a company together but because we have been creating and building RICH since we were just dating it is just a natural part of the evolution and growth of our relationship. We are very lucky in this aspect and do not take our common passion for social change and innovation for granted. This work is hard and it consumes a lot of your time. So to have a partner by your side that understands the intricacies of the work and is just as busied by it as you are makes giving so much of yourself to a community and its people a lot easier.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

This entire timeline of RICH is a pivot. Because we yielded to the needs of the community instead of our personal desires or goals for this work we are constantly moving, growing, and changing direction to a certain degree. We thought we were just going to be a little couple that hosted an annual prayer walk for a small and often overlooked community, instead we have created a programmatic hub for folks to get the services they need, a year round suite of youth programming built on the idea that we should lead in love and offer students diverse opportunities and experiences, work force development programming for adults, multiple community outreach events, and now in the Summer of 2023 we opened our first youth operated juice bar in South Baltimore.

Contact Info:

• Website: therichprogram.org
• Instagram: @therichprogram_
• Facebook: therichprogram
• Yelp: The RICH Juice Bar
• Other: Instagram: @richjuicebar