(MVR) My Virtual Relative

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." Frederick Douglass

Mass incarceration of Black parents perpetuates a "School to Prison Pipeline" that guarantees the failure of Black youth in every segment of American life and signals the eventual erasure of Black American society. Research shows that 51% of black fathers are incarcerated before their child’s 5th birthday while the incarceration rates of black women are 113 per 100,000, more than twice that of white women. Incarcerated parents leave behind vulnerable children who experience significantly higher rates of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Without the coping skills to deal with these tragedies, children turn to drugs, drop out of school, and engage in behaviors likely to lead to initial contacts with law enforcement. Statistics show that Black youth are 11 times more likely to be arrested by age 20 if they had an initial encounter with law enforcement in their early teens. This data is alarming when considering Blacks make up roughly 13% of all Americans. Losses this large imply the wholesale destruction of Black society. Without intervention neither Black America nor the United States will not survive this loss in any meaningful or desirable way.

My Virtual Relative (MVR) is an intelligent messaging platform that allows children to build and communicate Avatar-based relatives programmed using artificial intelligence inside virtual worlds. The platform has three components: 

 1. Construction – The Child’s construction of the Avatars inside their virtual worlds help to form the basis of the future relationship the Child will have with the Avatar and invites a multiplicity of developmental topics to include character building, conflict resolution, and critical thinking. 

2. Engagement - MVR allows children to interact with their “Virtual Relatives” in ways that are dynamic and promote realism.  

3. Mentorship - Parental Guidance is necessary for parents to maintain control of the parent-child relationship. Thus, parents can control the quantity and quality of complimentary and information-based messages.

Broad adoption should significantly reduce law enforcement encounters and reduce high rates of incarceration helping MVR save both Black Families and America.

MVR exists in the space between late stage concept and prototype. We plan to pilot the platform to more than 200 families in Cleveland, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Our identified partners have access to hundreds of thousands of families who meet our targeted demographic and social criteria.