BY KEELIN EVERLY-LANG for WEEKLY VOLCANO
One helpful way to understand grief can be to think of it as “love with nowhere to go.”
At the nonprofit Independent Achievements for Minority Youth (I.A.M.U.), a catastrophic event brought a lot of grief for a family that turned around and poured that love back into their community by creating programs for young people in Pierce, Thurston and King counties.
Founder and Executive Director Jada Jefferson’s nephew Jae was tragically murdered in 2015, leaving behind two young boys. In his honor, the family first created Our King’s Hands to support other families dealing with similar pain as they navigate costs of funeral and burial expenses.
This mission then evolved into programs that support young people’s needs holistically.
“We are driven by the belief that every young person deserves a safe space to grow into the best version of themselves, especially those who have faced trauma and simply need guidance to navigate life’s systems,” the organization states on its website.
I.A.M.U. runs several different programs that meet different needs in the community to embody their goal of “meeting young people where they’re at,” Jefferson said.
The organization serves those ages 8 to 24, recognizing that needs can be present at a wide range of ages from children to young adults.
I.A.M.U. is not just about meeting these needs; it’s also about celebrating and uplifting everything the young people in their programs have to offer.
“We want to get the community out to see that a lot of these youth have a lot of talent. They do things from spoken word to poetry to hip to singing to art, and it’s just amazing. Our youth are very talented. . . . You have eight-year-olds that’s playing Beethoven. . . . But how do you know if you’re not coming to the events?” Jefferson said.
All this skill will be on display at a talent show on December 19 at Highline College.
Along with events like this one, I.A.M.U. runs a full spectrum of programs to support young people.
Some focus on resources for those who have been through challenges or trauma.
One program focuses on re-entry from either the juvenile justice system or adult incarceration, providing hygiene and resource bags and support to help make that transition smoother.
Another provides support to children or youth who are victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC).
Other programs focus on prevention, like the Bright Futures Program (BFP) that works with schools to provide education about drug use, or the job skills program.
All of these programs are created to fill gaps in the system.
For example, the Safe Haven Initiative is a program that responds to the discovery that many young people who have firearms actually don’t want them and would turn them in if they had a safe and non-penalizing way to do so.
“Believe it or not, some of them are just afraid,” Jefferson said of the reasons they find that young people have weapons in the first place. “They want to make their friends feel like they’re tough. . . . But then they’re like, I really don’t want this. I need somewhere to give it, but I’m not going to the police. So what can I do?”
This program is currently on pause, but an expanded version is in the works to roll out next year with closer collaboration and coordination with local authorities.
This partnership is also an opportunity to build relationships between young people and police and help change perspectives from both sides, Jefferson said.
Like most nonprofits, especially right now, funding all these programs can be a big challenge. Rather than focusing solely on the typical fundraising and grant-application strategies, I.A.M.U. is building up a for-profit business that can support funding for its work.
Their business is a mobile drink and dessert cart called A Drip of Reign that can be hired for events and has more benefits than just providing funds for the organization.
The cart is also being used as a way to provide work opportunities for young people in their program and give them experience with accounting, menu development and other entrepreneurial and professional skills.
Other professional partnerships are also providing work opportunities, like one current partnership with a construction flagger training program.
A financial education partnership called We Invest is also bringing this life skill.
I.A.M.U. has a partnership with OUInvest, an “up-and-coming investment financial business” created by Bridge Jackson.
“Her program is amazing because it teaches these youth about financial education, how to invest their money, where to put it, and she talks to them in ways that make them understand it,” Jefferson said.
Looking toward the future, I.A.M.U. Community is focused on getting into sharing curriculum they’ve developed with local schools, even at the elementary level.
So far, one of Jefferson’s proudest moments has been hearing one of the program participants speak at one of their events at Highline about how she wants to be a social worker.
It was a proud moment getting to see her “speak with so much conviction” and “remember when she was this little bitty girl who didn’t even want to open her mouth, and now she’s up here, like empowering other people,” Jefferson said.
