SUMMARY: BUILDING BUSINESS: The Gatekeeper’s Collective Economic Empowerment Model
Having agreed that making The Gatekeeper’s Collective (TGC) a for-profit business was in our collective interests at a previous caucus, at the most recent Gatekeeper’s Collective meeting, Brothers convened a BUILDING BUSINESS Economic Empowerment workshop in which we considered ways and means of fashioning TGC into a profit-generating business serving the community.
We decided our business should embody the principles of the Nguzo Saba (the 7 Kwanzaa principles), asking, ‘Do we want to create something beautiful and morally uplifting, or do we want to make money?’ And, ‘Are the two mutually exclusive?’
Respecting the first two Nguzo Saba principles, participants agreed that we will collectively build an enterprise that helps us to be more self-determining individually and as a community.
In observance of the third principle, Ujima, meaning collective work and responsibility, we asked, What skills and talents are there among us? And, What, if any, entrepreneurial interests have you considered or cultivated?
Among the answers included: Architectural renovation and design; Literary editing, computer programming, web-design; Writing, editing, story-telling; Counseling, listening; Talent management; TV journalism; Teaching, designing, acting; Song-writing, jingle-writing; IT, communication skills; Historian; public relations, fund-raising, marketing, outreach; Archiving; Cooking; visual art; cleaning; coaching; mediating; performing arts; etc.
In considering, What kind of marketplace might we create? Participants proposed that same gender loving men are taste-makers – arbiters of taste. Indeed, as one person put it, “We are influencers to influencers…”
Also in respect of Ujima, we determined that, in addition to building our community, the business would solve some problem facing the community.
Participants broke up into groups and brainstormed potential business models.
In the coming weeks, TGC will reveal the results of those confabulations, and map out steps towards operationalizing one of the models.
