Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cesar Torres. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Cesar thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Like many others, the pandemic gave us a lot of free time and challenged our creativity. Steve Garcia Junior, cofounder and president of the foundation, decided to start a podcast known as the Emo Brown Podcast. Initially it served to provide a platform for local business owners and leaders in the community, while shining a light on their accomplishments. It was also a therapeutic way for us to keep in contact with our friends about what was going on and how we were holding up. Through the process of interview, Steve eventually interviewed everyone who would become the founding board for the foundation. The main inspiration was Justin Clint Lipford, a social worker for the YMCA who inspired all of us to do a little bit more. With the Podcast gaining popularity and financial boost through Patreon, we collectively decided we should put that money and our skills as a group to good use. Not only did we want to make a difference in the community where we were all earning a living, but also create a legacy for ourselves that our families would be proud of. At that time, Emo Brown & its supporters become a social club of sorts, along with an athletic club that regularly engaged in bike rides. Knowing some local schools were facing financial challenges for the holiday, we quickly threw together a bike ride fundraiser in a month, and we were able to raise $7000 to impact these three schools and select families. With that under our belt, we knew we had a chance to make a real difference and we were on our way.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After the success of our first fundraising event, we were not only motivated to keep going stronger, but to make the focus of our efforts the youth & their future impact. We’re fortunate that on our board we have two educators (Christian Moreno & Enrique Chikle Lugo), along with a extensive list within our network. So not only did we go to work partnering up with different schools to help assist in paying for programs or providing financial relief, but developing our Community Investment Program. That would be the primary focus of our group, which is to provide scholarships for local youth. We approach this slightly unorthodox in that instead of limiting scholarship opportunities to students leaving the traditional educational system, we opened it up to anybody between the ages of 17 and 21 who apart from seeking traditional school funding, also had the ability to show us that they were pursuing a different career path that they found important to their future. We had intentions of awarding five scholarships initially in 2021, but our fundraising efforts were successful enough to allow us to award six scholarships. I’m proud to say that in 2022 we have raised enough money to award 10 scholarships!
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Since the majority of the group came into the nonprofit with no prior experience or background in that world, we knew we had our work cut out for us. However, we were confident we could start by utilizing the podcast to help make a donation from the money being raised through Patreon and the support of the Emo Brown social club. Then we realized as members we had to pay our monthly dues to help further contributions. However, we quickly went to work utilizing the skill set that brought us all together, our vast network and reach within our community. This came to life in the form of the inaugural Emo Brown Charity Golf Tournament, which took place August 13 of 2021. With the help of our title sponsor Ballast Point, along with a myriad of other businesses from the community such as Grasshopper, Hoppy Daze, the Elwood, Manhattan bar, 3 Punk ales, Willys insurance and Element build and design. Despite it being the initial event of that magnitude, we sold out and had a successful showing in which we were able to raise over $25,000!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I think our entire existence is really an example of resilience. Again, we are six individuals with similar backgrounds and while most of us knew each other loosely, we were brought together by a Podcast during the pandemic. To be able to create something so incredibly impactful that’s only existed for two years is very humbling. A perfect example is a woman that came in contact with Justin. Her family had come into some financial hardship‘s and she reached out about assistance as her children were returning to school. We turned to the Emo Brown social club and supporters and in a week they were able to raise over $1000, which we matched to provide some help. On another occasion, a student from Enrique’s school had a full ride scholarship offer, but could not make the visit out to the East Coast. We were able to step up and provide her the help covering the cost for her trip so she could accept the scholarship and continue her scholastic journey.
This second year our golf tournament raised over $40,000, and we moved into a new office/headquarters space. We’ve already utilized that space to partner up with another nonprofit for an event highlighting local leaders and the future of our communities. The plan is to continue to partner up with different nonprofits or organizations that need a place for fundraising or just hosting. We also plan to showcase local artist through shows, as well as hosting educational seminars with the myriad of people in our circle that can teach our community everything from financial literacy, to owning a house, to starting a business.
Contact Info:
- Website: EmoBrownFoundation.org
- Instagram: @EmoBrownFoundation
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/people/Emo-Brown-Foundation
- Linkedin: EmoBrownFoundation
- Twitter: @EmoBrownFound
Image Credits
Israel Castillo