The Ubuntu Climate Strong Initiative

Ubuntu means we are all connected. The Ubuntu Climate Strong Initiative was created to help BIPOC entrepreneurs become part of the emerging green economy as well as create climate resilient communities in the shadow of the climate emergency. We do this by providing them with seed capital, coaching and tech partners through our business incubator.  This structure solves three problems:

1. It helps Black and Brown communities engage in climate change solution creation and resilience.

2. It creates businesses and jobs in Black and Brown communities through our private equity structure.

3. It creates a formal partnership that allows Black and Brown climate resilient entrepreneurs to enhance their businesses with the latest tech through a robust and agile platform.

We have a global partnership through the Community Development Society to duplicate our work in Denver, Colorado. This allows us to share solutions and ideas globally with communities of color. 

People of color in the US and in the Global South are disproportionately negatively affected by the adverse effects of climate emergency. Extreme weather emergencies, climate migration, food chain disruption are only a few of the challenges  Yet, only 1.3 percent of all dollars dedicated to climate emergency are directed to enterprises and projects owned, directed, originated and operated by Black and Brown entrepreneurs. BIPOC green entrepreneurs and climate activists should be supported on the front line of finding climate resilience solutions for our neighborhoods. This proposal addresses that. The main challenges facing BIPOC green entrepreneurs are resources, capital and the technology to see innovative ideas into fruition. Our platform allows us to match ideas and seed capital with people and partners in order to create magic. This is an opportunity for us to bring underserved communities into service to save our communities and the planet while building wealth, creating jobs and building an on-ramp for communities of color into the coming green economy.

By providing our Black and Brown participants with the most important resources --- seed capital, moral support, coaching with  technology partners, we believe these teams will have a direct impact on our ability to defend Black and Brown communities from the worst aspects of climate emergency as well as create wealth, jobs and empowerment for our neighborhoods. Not only do we provide complete first round support to our participants through our incubator,  we bring them into partnership with tech sources. Instead of creating a one time event for these sources to come together, we have created a platform that makes this an ongoing opportunity. This platform matches creative ideas with potential partners in the climate resilience  arena through a matching tool on our platform. The synthesis of this has the potential to create jobs, opportunity and bring Black and Brown innovation to the fore, when it comes to creating resilient communities.  Our platform also contains a private equity component that allows equity from the funding of these companies to come back to this structure. This has the potential of making our plan a self-sustaining structure. 

Our target population for this project are underserved Black and Brown adults 21-45.  We are creating a path forward to the emerging green economy for these innovators. This is the age group that will take the most risks and develop bold ideas.  From my travels to over 30 countries around the world, I have discovered that there are plenty of investment dollars waiting to fund innovative ideas in climate resilience. We want to make sure they see a port to Black and Brown communities in their search. Our platform has the talent and the infrastructure for their investments. Even more, we're talking about climate resilience solutions that have a direct impact in the community, affecting thousands and their way of life. Our communities deserve champions, too.

Our desire is to help bring more of the climate emergency dollars from around the world into more communities of color. As I mentioned earlier, only 1.3 percent of funding for climate emergency (environmental justice) goes to BIPOC communities. LA+One+Pager_Funding+Disparity.pdf (squarespace.com)

It is vitally important that BIPOC communities have climate champions that look like them so that participation in climate solutions doesn't look like someone outside of the community. Seeing us at the tip of the sword encourages us to do our part in climate resilience.

One of the best ways of creating generational wealth, as in alignment with your challenge, is to create entrepreneurial opportunities of ownership and leadership. We believe our project is perfect for wealth generation/job creation by the following:

1. It is finding and supporting BIPOC entrepreneurs seeking to have their projects and ideas supported.

2. It has the opportunity to produce growing businesses and jobs IN the community.

3. It is setting up Black and Brown entrepreneurs with the latest technology because of our tech partnership.

4. It keeps BIPOC communities from losing even more wealth because of another crises of scale.

We have developed this new stage of this project as a follow-up to the second stage of our original proof-of-concept model. Our first stage in 2017 was with five different teams around the world (Chicago, Denver, Lagos, Kathmandu and Queen City, New Zealand. Our second stage was performed in 2020 with 7 Denver-based teams. These two experiences allowed us to figure out how to make the project successful through our experience. 

We provide a platform that marries BIPOC green entrepreneurs with a private equity firm and a business incubator so that they can create wealth and jobs in the community through a climate resilience lead. We think this combination will produce real-world problem solving while creating wealth and jobs in Black and Brown communities. This goes beyond hoping that BIPOC green entrepreneurs will be included into the ventures of other people, but that they will create organically create new and innovative applications of technology and wisdom to also help solve the crisis we all face. All participants in our program must maintain ownership and control of the venture so that it has the opportunity to create wealth in our communities. 

Each 6 months, we will have 7 new companies under management with a total of 14 companies under management each year. After one year, their incubation term will expire.

Each year, we will have 1,500 participants in our partners program who would be able to get our Zoom classes. These partners would be eligible to be considered for the incubator program. They will become partners through our online platform. 

In five years, we will have served 7,500 partners, launched 75 businesses through our incubator and provided climate resilient solutions to over 25 communities averaging 1.2 million people per community. 

Our key measurable indicators include three basic measuring tools:

1. How many of our incubator organizations find second round funding. The usual rate is for funding for companies that go through an incubator is 92%

compared to those who don't go through one, which is _61%. Based on these assumptions, out of the 14 organizations that pass through our organization per year, 5 of them should get second round funding.

2. From the partners section of our project, 14 of them will qualify to transition to an incubator each year. We will be able to measure how many partnerships are created through our platform among the partners. We are expecting to see a minimum of 50 partnerships will form due to the platform.

3. The success of The Community Development Society to do BIPOC green entrepreneur development in communities where they are present.

5Chet W. Sisk -- President. Founder. Chief Visionary Officer  720-313-4122 (full time)

Kimberly Horvath -- Chief Operations Manager - 609-254-4761 (Full Time)

Uma Golpadass -- Director of Business Development.. 720-633-6528 (part time)

Michanda Lindsey -- Personal Coaching and Development 303-250-1113 (part time)

Craig Schwimmer --- Financial/Private Equity Consultant  (part time)

As the Chief Visionary Officer, my personal experience as a Black man in the United States, my experience travelling around the world to 30 different countries, my 8 years of experience as an entrepreneur of an advertising agency and writing several books on personal/corporate change make me key to lead this venture. 

Kimberly Horvath has spent years working as a Human Resources officer for Marriot International. She also served in the capacity of operations manager in our first proof-of-concept model of the UBR Climate Strong Initiative.  Her intimate experience with the platform that we're using combined with her organizational skills gives us a seamless flow between what we were doing and what we will be doing.  She brings her professional and cultural experience as a Black woman into our decision making process.

Michanda Lindsey, a former television reporter, has been a transformational coach for the past 12 years and understands how Black and Brown people have had to navigate microaggressions, imposter syndrome, subtle racism and other challenges in the business and corporate world because of her experience as a black woman. 

Uma Golapadass is an East Indian woman from Singapore who served as the Chief Diversity Officer in the corporate world of Schlumberge Oil. She brings diversity experience along with contacts to other corporations looking for BIPOC partners in the climate emergency battle. 

Craig Schwimmer has a clear vision on how private equity firms and incubators work. He has provided us with bullet-proof legal and accounting consultation

Diversity is neither skin color or thought by themselves. Both of those elements must be combined with diversity of experience so that an organization can have a team that not only provides different views, but  different experiences and culture. We've come together as a team to rally around empowering historically disadvantaged communities and bringing our skills and visions to bare on that central idea. I personally believe that a true DEI team must be seeded with people who have had to walk through some level of difficulty and even trauma so that the work that we do has an empathetic base. Even if you check off all of the boxes, you must have empathy with those that you seek to serve.

One of the greatest challenges BIPOC entrepreneurs face is access to capital. Simply put, many of us don't come from communities or families with deep pockets due to the challenges of systemic and historical racism. I bring those things up not as a crutch, but as springboards that brought me to this point. You see, it took me some time to get past the idea that I couldn't get access to capital because I wasn't good enough or my idea was poor or that I didn't know what I was talking about. It was when I was able to acknowledge the invisible hand of racism that I realized something else was at work. That clarity of thought gave me a steely resolve to defy the intention of racism. Coming to your organization with, what I believe to be a winning idea, is an important personal step for me to get past my imposter syndrome ghosts. I am confident in the implementation of the idea and believe your organization can help facilitate the support as well as the access to capital.  Your support allows me to support others who also fight these same ghosts.  I look forward to our working collaboration. 

Access to capital is our number one potential barrier to implementing an idea that is perfect for the time. Your support in helping us connect to investors, financial partners and promotions on a global scale would be the game change for our trajectory. 

In addition, the pairing of our participant's projects to the latest technology is key to creating a viable, powerful approach to developing climate resilient communities. This is something that needs to be stated over and over again...communities of color are at more risk to the extremes in weather climate emergency produces. We don't have time to wait for the usual process of months or years. Resilience training and development needs to happen now.

There are three organizations we've had the desire to work with. They are:

The Sierra Club. I realize that the founder of The Sierra Club, John Muir has a problematic legacy when it comes to his racism. However, now seems like the right time for the organization to step up and step out show that while they respect their founder's basic ideas, they break with the kind of person he was. Our partnership would be that declaration.

Shelton Green Alpha Fund. We want to make our structure available as an investment option shortly but want to spend some time partnering with a socially conscious fund first to walk the path to doing it.

Black Lives Matter. We want them to put our construct in their portfolio of actions people can take to create equity and empowerment. We want to be part of the conversation of what are you for to balance out what are you against. In order for our project to do well, it must have buy in from communities of color. Being part of BLM's arsenal is a step in that direction. 

Our unique platform incorporates the idea that climate emergency resilience is intimately tied to creating resilient people. As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, one of the most important things we can do as people of color is fortify our mental, spiritual and physical health. We want the money that is generated from our climate resilient enterprises to go directly to funding these kinds of entities. This brings resiliency and empowerment full circle by creating a resilient echo system. Tying all of these things together no longer silos our different challenges, but ties them together to a focus. In our resilience community platform, we empower the community to take care of the community instead of outside organizations.  We believe developing climate emergency ventures can become the tip of the sword in helping our communities focus on re-imagining who and what we are. 

We have created an exact copy of the Ubuntu project for classrooms in the Denver metro area through the Denver Public School system. This program is designed to show young people how they have value and meaning in a world that requires their insight and vision in re-imagining the future. We have created a pipeline that prepares young people to move into our adult program. This is a program that helps young people understand climate emergency, develop possible solutions and then how to implement them. We provide them with the level of support they need to explore their innovative and creative ideas. 

Our project The Ubuntu Climate Strong Initiative is based on the same premise of the Elevate Prize...to create a platform of social entrepreneurs of color that focus on creating resilient projects that empower resilient communities that we live in. Since communities of color are first and most affected by climate emergency extreme weather, it stands to reason that BIPOC social entrepreneurs of the community should lead this charge. We've created a platform that allows them to partner with tech companies and each other to empower their projects. This mirrors the basic aspects of the Elevate prize. We provide seed capital, connection, principal, emotional support and visionary leadership. We believe it is easy to elevate humanity when we are all part of the solution challenge as opposed to only being victims that are being served.

Our project The Ubuntu Climate Strong Initiative is based around resilience. We obtain 30% equity in the companies that we counsel, support, empower, train and provide seed capital to. Once the company moves to second round funding, that 30% goes back to funding community resilient programs in our community resilient platform. We see this as the right way to make a community smart, safe and resilient.  We feel our foundational idea is based on the same premise of the GM prize. Since communities of color are first and most affected by climate emergency extreme weather, it stands to reason that BIPOC social entrepreneurs of the community should lead this charge -- to keep our communities safe.  We've created a platform that allows them to partner with tech companies and each other to scale their projects. This mirrors the basic aspects of the GM prize. We provide seed capital, connection, principal, emotional support and visionary leadership. We believe it is easy to elevate humanity when we are all part of the solution challenge as opposed to only being victims that are being served.

The emerging green economy is starting. The great challenge we have that it has the potential of going in the same direction of all other emerging trends. As the companies and their infrastructure emerge, Black and Brown communities will be left behind again. We will then be forced to create an inclusion effort when we could have avoided this by bringing BIPOC entrepreneurs in from the start. Our project, The Ubuntu Climate Strong Initiative, is designed to create inclusion into the biggest and most important world change we have ever seen at the ground floor instead of later. Our project not only creates climate emergency resilient entrepreneurs, but supports a resilient lifestyle for communities of color first and most affected by the extreme weather of climate emergency. 

It was because of women of color our project has had it's success to date. With that in mind, our project aims to make sure there is an equal balance of male and female participants in our selection process. We believe this helps balance out the complimentary male and female energies to maximize the opportunities for success. It's part of our charter.

We believe our new platform, using the most popular technology of our time, leverages the best of social media to galvanize entrepreneurs of color to a greater and important cause -- creating resilient communities in the face of climate emergency. While there has been great criticism of this technology because of the negative use of it, we plan on showing how critical it is in gathering and empowering BIPOC communities. We have developed the right formula of creating climate strong entrepreneurial efforts, simultaneously funding community resilient programs and organizing our communities around a new way forward. Even more, it moves us past silo challenges and forces us to see the integration of it all, so that we see and implement a more direct solution.