We recently connected with Ashley Arledge and have shared our conversation below.
Ashley, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
My mission behind everything I do is love. I grew up in an amazing household with my mother, brother, and grandparents. It was a very driven environment; we were pushed and encouraged to be the best. Love for me was interpreted as saying words, following up on those words, and doing other random deeds unwarranted. My father left our family when I was really young and although he attempted to love me in the way I’d learned to define it, he never quite measured up. It was in this relationship that I learned and adopted the belief that people cannot be trusted and love does nothing but disappoint. Although my mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle loved me in a way that was filling, it did not supersede what I was experiencing with my father.
As time went on I put my grandfather in the role of my father and received all the love I ever wanted. He became the person I excelled for. At the age of 14, he passed and my world fractured in a way I don’t believe I’ve ever recovered from nor do I think I ever will. My journey has been how to learn how to live life with this fracture; embracing and moving through all that comes with it. At the time my grandfather’s death only proved my belief to me true; all love does is disappoint and guarantees the bottom will always drop out. Love is not stable.
As the years went on I found myself excelling externally, but failing internally. I found solace in my friends more than my family, however, not all of my friends cared to be around each other. As such I hung with them separately. I noticed each group received a different part of me; parts that were true of me, but different. I quickly learned, not every group was excepting of every part of me. I decided to hide those parts and only show them the parts I thought they could handle. This went on for years until I found myself in a place where it was breaking me. I made the decision to put it all down and dare to just be me. Whoever loved and liked me, were the people who were meant to be a mainstay in my life.
As time went on I wanted to find out more about people, why we are the way we are, God and His capacity to love us (as the human race), and me and how I could learn to let go of fear, pain, trauma, and unforgiveness. I made a choice to let go of everything I’d been taught and told to became a student and potentially learn something life changing. My life turned upside down – significant and meaningful relationships broken, became the worst version of myself in the actions I took, confronted with the biggest fears I’ve ever had, and faced my past trauma to understand my present and direct my future. All of this brought me to a place of getting professional help and doing whatever was necessary to move me forward. I continued the work for years and found myself in arriving at a place of not only understanding love, but becoming love. Love (kindness, patience, was what I had to become to work me through past traumas and become a person I was meant to be. In that, a person who extends love in everything I do because if it transform me in such a massive way, it can do the same for others. My job is to create and take advantage of opportunities to be love.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
J.A.Y.A. uses the arts and education as a conduit that supports teens and young adults by identifying and creating content that promotes living a life of love (patience, kindness, honoring others, forgiveness, persevering, not envying, boasting, prideful, self-seeking or easily angered, not taking delight in evil, but rejoicing in truth) consistent personal and mental growth, giving, value based decision making, and no fear.
Based on 13 years of experience in working with teens and young adults I’ve found they’ve experienced a childhood that either brought happiness, pain, or something in between. Teens and young adults have much going on in their lives. They are wanting to be adults and exercise their independence yet they don’t quite have the mental development, nor the “life education/experience”. Yet and still they have a voice, gifts, talents, and a message to say and simply want and need guidance on how to mature into what they’ve been given so they can live out their unique creation. They have things they need to learn how to overcome and utilize to be able to push their lives forward. They are so impressionable and whoever or whatever satisfies their craving for attention wins their minds. Daily, they are bombarded with content on social media and the internet (with it’s massive search engine) in addition to content from our typical streams of entertainment – television, music, etc. This daily consumption is feeding their minds and we all know where the mind goes, the body soon will follow. My heart’s desire is to help teens and young adults grow and mature into who they were created to be – heal from whatever trauma they’ve experienced, give them a space and education to learn core beliefs and values while using them to make life decisions, and provide supportive tools to help them consistently grow. The next generation needs the generations before them to reach back and give hindsight while encouraging and equipping them to utilize the current powers of their generation to build upon the foundation that’s been set. It’s time for us to work together to move us all forward. I believe providing the next generation with alternatives to the content they are currently receiving will help to feed their minds with information that will help support their journeys into healthy adulthood.. J.A.Y.A. is purposing to provide stage productions, master classes, workshops, museum exhibits, school programs, community programs for young adults, ultimately a school (high school or college level) dedicated to arts and education. This includes tours for the stage productions, master classes, workshops, and museum exhibits. J.A.Y.A. Legacy’s plan is to be present in communities across the globe with our tours as well as our programs to maintain local support. There will be an online presence/resource(s) for people to tap into as well. (Recorded master classes and workshops can be made available online, live online events, an app for people to utilize to help with their goals, growth, and “get-up”).
We believe because of J.A.Y.A. is in existence:
– A younger generation equipped to live a life of significance (legacy)
– Teens and young adults feeling and knowing they are equipped for “adulting”, but adulting in a way that is productive
– Helping/Equipping teens and young adults to end a life of poverty
– Providing alternative productive, informative, supportive, and inspiring content for teens and young adults
– Producing teens and young adults that know the value of a human life and choose to help instead of take/kill
– More communicative and healthy relationships between young men and young women
– Young artists growing in their crafts and using them to help others
– Generations working together to move the human race forward
– Teens and young adults focused on building a healthy lifestyle and mindset
– Support for parents in communities
– More unified communities
– Wealthy lifestyle education
Some problems we are aiming to solve are as follows:
– Lack of safe and supportive environments for self-discovery and growth
– Poverty stricken communities/households
– Lack of outlets for youth and young adults
– Lack of value for human life
– Lack of adequate information on life skills
We currently are working on our first school curriculum called G.R.O.W.N. teach teens and young adults how to grow and own in the areas of personal development, wealth and finance, and business. We teamed up with another nonprofit F.A.C.E. in the creation of the program. We launched our program January 2022 and have consistently been able to impact people’s lives. We’ve been able to partner with some amazing business, people, and organizations to serve so many. We’ve just wrapped teaching G.R.O.W.N. in a 5-week summer program (Core 4 Learning). We are currently gearing up for a 4-week session with Planet Health in Compton. We are working to continue to build partnerships across LA to ensure the continual reach of our program.
Later this year, we will launch our first community program entitled Ladies and Gents. In this mentoring type program we will help young women and men learn what it means to be ladies and gentlemen in multiple areas of life (life skills, ownership, etiquette, finances, relationships, etc.). We will have older ladies and gentlemen mentoring, teaching, and equipping the younger generation in group and field trip settings.
What I’m most grateful for is the opportunity to use my life experiences to help others to bring them some sort of support. I understand how critical support can be in a person’s life. I’m honored that I was chosen to bring forth this organization. As an organization I believe we are most proud of each person who has made the chose to be a part of our programs, productions, events, workshops, etc. They made the choice to choose growth for themselves.
Our team is absolutely amazing. They see the vision and are so willing to help it come to fruition. I wouldn’t be able to do any of what has transpired without them. I think it is them and our individuality that makes us different. There are plenty of organizations out there doing similar work and I think that’s amazing. I celebrate them in what they are doing just I celebrate our team in what we are building and growing. We each have our own unique makeup which allows us to have our own approach to how we execute our works. It is this uniqueness, our differences that make us the right fit. Those who are meant to be connected to our organization will be.
We are currently working to embed ourselves in the Los Angeles community, but we have a vision to embed ourselves in communities across the globe. We are endeavoring to be the arts and education organization dedicated to being the change we want to see in the lives of our young people.
We strive to create environments and experiences where people experience love and leave different than how they arrived. We want our brand to be synonymous with this experience.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
When we began to launch our 4-week program after the pandemic, we planned for our program to be in person at a location we worked to secure. We’d planned a schedule to promote the program and then life hit us and we had to pivot. I was moving and where I was moving to fell through, so I had to find a new place. I also didn’t have transportation as I’d sold my car the previous year. My business partner experienced a major life altering transition. As you can imagine our time to promote became very limited. We kept our commitment to the event we booked for promotions and the remainder promotion schedule pretty much became non-existent. My business partner needed to focus on family and herself and a such I needed to step up and cover for her. I was confident in our product, however, a bit fearful to do everything on my own and this was our first time teaching this exact material.
I looked at our situation and knew rescheduling was not an option. Life is always going to happen and it’s how you respond to it that makes the difference. So I found another place to stay and was able to use ride sharing apps as well as utilize my business partners car. I learned her material in a way that was comfortable for me to teach and made the decision I was going to show up everyday regardless of who decided to show up. Even with our limited promotions we had 4 young adults enroll. I wanted to add more so I decided to reach out to some young adults I was working with in other areas and invite them to our program. They were unable to make it in person, but were able to be on zoom. We made the decision to allow them to attend, even though it wasn’t planned.
This shift allowed us to be able to actually test our product out in a way that could potential scale our business. It was a success and afforded us the opportunity to open our next 4-week session to others outside of the state.
I learned to not fight what is naturally happening. Breathe and move with it because it more than likely is happening to help you work out another part of your business you didn’t know you needed. I also learned to pay attention to what was working and go with that flow even if it was the opposite of what was planned. It was completely uncomfortable, but I stand on the other side knowing I’m much stronger and can handle whatever is going to come my way. My job is to not quit.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
I’m pretty old school with this. I like to reach out and personally make calls to people and check-in. We spend much time building the relationships in the beginning and I think it’s important to continue them even when the program or event is over. In this we are able to build a trust with everyone and show we mean what we say when we are here to serve and create environments of support. This takes time, but I’ve found it to be the most effective. People open up and are willing to receive more tools and guidance to help them with their lives.
For our G.R.O.W.N. program, we have a bi-weekly check-in session that is made available for everyone who’s participated in our program. In these sessions they can ask questions, go deeper in their assignments they were given, or simply catch us up with what is happening in their lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.justasyouarelgacy.org
- Instagram: jayalegacy
- Facebook: Jaya Legacy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-arledge-9b412722/
- Twitter: jayalegacy
- Youtube: J.A.Y.A. Legacy