Building stronger communities for a better quality of life
Growing Local Businesses Means Stronger Communities
The Need
Many people and many communities are floundering. With too little control over their future and the future of their children, they feel demoralized. Whatever help they may have received in the past hasn’t worked for them and now, they feel left out in the cold without viable solutions to their problems. This deprivation affects all aspects of their lives, of the lives of those around them, and of their communities.
Poverty is a destructive force that leads to a breakdown of families and limits the potential of children and of their possibility to have a happy and successful life.
Because we at TotSpark consider education and jobs as being two of the chief pillars in making all things possible, our solution focuses on:
• Building the necessary foundation in children’s earliest years for happy and healthy development and cognitive growth;
• Providing the communities in which they live with mechanisms that enable these communities and their inhabitants to thrive.
Our Approach
Within these communities, we work to generate:
• Achievement
First, we provide jobs and new enterprise. We also provide the necessary support in the form of job training, parenting training, and effective early education.
• Empowerment
As people begin to work and participate in new business enterprise, and in strengthening their community, their successes and achievements provide a sense of pride in accomplishment. With it comes a new-found confidence which enables them to see themselves differently. They now feel empowered and able to do what in the past seemed undoable, and this gives them real advantages.
• Self-Actualization
They can now believe in a better future, one in, which they can work towards their own success, the success of their children, and the belief in reaching their full potential.
Our approach is four-pronged:
• create new business enterprise
• create new jobs
• provide job training
• provide strong early childhood education
The Current Situation
• Community organizations supported by Federal government grants, large foundations, state agencies, and universities can’t seem to get to the heart of the problem – few jobs, no trust, and no workable and acceptable plan.
• Small business and small communities know that they can’t depend on more government spending to solve their problems.
• There’s a pervasive feeling that top-down government has its fingers in every community pie down to the smallest and newest little cupcake.
• Current narratives, mixed with congratulatory sound bites of progress made, make communities wonder why things aren’t working for them. This is debilitating.