The Mindful Marketplace with Joel Skene

Harnessing Social Enterprises for Economic Reforms & Community Equity - Part 1

• Joel Skene / Damien Durr

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What if social enterprises could reshape the global economy while prioritizing social and environmental value? This episode of the Mindful Marketplace features an enlightening conversation with Damien Durr, a leader of the Gus Newport Project and DCD Empowerment, as we unravel the transformative power of social ventures. Damien sheds light on how these enterprises generate trillions in revenue, create millions of jobs, and strengthen community resilience. We tackle the pressing issue of mega-banks overshadowing community banks and credit unions and the repercussions this has on local economies. Plus, we highlight the ambitious goals of the Community Equity Fund by the Eagle Market Streets Development Corporation, aimed at fostering equitable economic development in Asheville, North Carolina.

In a thought-provoking chapter inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of a beloved community, we focus on the intersection of faith, justice, and education. Damien discusses faith institutions' pivotal role in integrating moral values into policy decisions, challenging the conventional single-bottom-line approach. We delve into DCD Empowerment's mission to uplift marginalized youth by linking talent with opportunity and addressing critical issues like low self-esteem and trauma. This episode not only broadens our understanding of intelligence but also emphasizes the creation of learning environments where educators and students grow together, nurturing hope and resilience in marginalized communities. Join us for a powerful discussion on how economic reforms and community-driven change can pave the way for a more just and equitable society.

https://dcdempowerment.com/
www.gusnewport.com

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Joel:

What if investing in each other could change the world? I'm Joel Skeen with bizradious and this is the Mindful Marketplace. Welcome to another edition of the Mindful Marketplace here on bizradious. Really happy to have you here. Thank you for your time today. I am Joel Skeen, really also very grateful that we get to interview today Damian Durr, who is a speaker at an upcoming conference. He is head of the Gus Newport Project, as well as the DCD Empowerment which we're going to get to discuss with him.

Joel:

If this is your first time on the show, this is the show where we talk to the entrepreneurs, the industry leaders, the investors, the advisors, the economic experts and the other folks who are questioning the assumption that there's only one bottom line in business and in money. And this is the show where we really get to connect our values and our community to our businesses and to ourselves. So we'll get into our conversation here with Damian in just a moment, but first we got to hit the balance sheet the assets, liabilities, debts and investments. Okay, first, in the assets column, I want to talk about an article here in Forbes about the Schwab Foundation's Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship. They recently found that there are actually approximately 10 million social enterprises worldwide, which collectively generate around $2 trillion in annual revenue, creating over 200 million jobs. The sector now outranks other mainstream industries by annual revenue, such as things like telecom and apparel. These enterprises make up 3% of all businesses globally and stand out from traditional businesses by placing strong emphasis on creating social and environmental value in addition to economic value. Social enterprises align their missions with sustainable development goals, particularly in creating decent work, driving climate action, reducing poverty and inequalities. They prioritize social impact over financial returns and reinvest their profits back into their mission. Half of all social enterprises, the study found, are led by women, compared to a mere 20% of conventional businesses, highlighting the inherent inclusivity and diversity ingrained within these ventures, both in their structure and goals. The study also found that social enterprises positively impact the lives of millions, from rural villages in places like Africa to the megacities in Asia and Latin America, all the way to the underprivileged parts of North America and Europe. Despite their significant contribution, though, social enterprises are underestimated and probably underrepresented, facing a significant funding gap of about 1.3 trillion dollars and a lack of legal recognition in many countries. Movements such as catalyst 2030 are advocating for better policies to support the social economy and initiatives like the Corporate Social Innovation Compass say that six times aim to prioritize private sector support for social enterprises and sustainable economics.

Joel:

Second, in the liabilities column, I want to talk about monopoly banking. There was a really interesting piece here in the Institute for the Local Self-Reliance about the US banking sector and how it's dominated by a few large banks, often referred to as mega banks, such as Wells Fargo, citigroup, bank of America, jpmorgan Chase. These mega banks hold a significant portion of the country's assets and are accused of prioritizing shareholder profits over the needs of local businesses and communities. Over the past three decades, community banks and credit unions have been disappearing. These smaller financial institutions are crucial for fostering local economies and have been shown to be more effective at meeting the financial needs of their communities. However, federal banking policies have led to their decline, allowing megabanks to dominate the economy. The consolidation of the banking industry, particularly the emergence of these megabanks back in the 1990s, has led to a sharp decline in community banks and credit unions. This consolidation has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of community banks and credit unions, with megabanks now holding a majority of the industry's assets. The research indicates that community banks and credit unions actually outperform megabanks in several important ways. They are less expensive, more efficient, better at judging and managing risk and devote a larger share of their resources to productive lending, particularly small businesses. Their business model, which focuses on making productive loans and fostering long-term relationships with customers, is seen as more aligned with the broader interests of the economy and community. The article points several community and state-level solutions, so if you want to know more, go ahead and check out that at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance All right.

Joel:

Next in the debts column some interesting developments here. There is actually activists working in the debt world right now, a group called the Debt Collective. These are the folks that canceled about $10 million in student debt at Morehouse College last year. They staged a protest at Capitol Hill demanding the White House prioritize education over war spending. More than a dozen members were arrested during the protest, which included speeches from Democratic Congresswomen Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib. The group highlighted the staggering $1.7 trillion of student debt burden and criticized the allocation of funds towards war instead of addressing the student debt crisis. They urged the White House to use its executive powers to cancel all student debt. The group criticized the swift authorization of emergency weapons sales to Israel, while at the same time, student debt cancellation was delayed. The protest coincided with Biden's reelection campaign, highlighting the dissatisfaction he is facing, especially with young voters.

Joel:

I do want to let you guys know too. In order to help combat the debt crisis, the Mindful Marketplace is providing all of our listeners with a free, customized report on how to best eliminate and personal and business debt, so you can learn the different strategies of how to get out of debt and learn which combination is best for you. Lots of families are using that report to eliminate their debt in about half the time or less without having to spend any money. So check that out on mindfulmarketplaceshowcom as well as support efforts to get debt eliminated for folks who need it eliminated.

Joel:

All right, in the investments column, I wanted to point out something locally here, which is the Community Equity Fund put up by the Eagle Market Streets Development Corporation. We actually talked about this on my sister show, community Capital Live, with Michael Schumann, kevin Jones and Stephanie Sweps from Twitty. The Community Equity Fund, which is based here in my hometown of Asheville, north Carolina, is a program that supports disenfranchised business owners through injections of capital and access to their quote next level business advisory services. So these funds are distributed on a rolling basis and are repaid through increments of business revenue after a 24-month repayment deferral. So, unlike debt, it's more like revenue sharing, and the Community Equity Fund is best able to support businesses primarily actually owned by marginalized individuals that have been in business for three years or more. So the fund aims to work with entrepreneurs who want to scale their business by utilizing non-traditional capital. Funds may be used for business operations leading to job creation or to gain market shares that will lead to an increase in jobs created.

Joel:

All right, okay, to learn more about that, you can actually head over to mindfulmarketplaceshowcom on YouTube. You can go to Mindful Marketplace Show and you can go ahead and learn more about the Eagle Market Street Development Corporation's community equity fund. All right, that's the balance sheet. I am excited to get to talk here with Damien Durr. I was introduced to Damien by a previous guest that we had on Reverend Sidney Williams. If you didn't get the chance to listen to that episode, I'd recommend you go back and do that. But he introduced me here to Damien Durr and we'll talk a little bit about the work that they're doing together. But first I'd like to ask you, damian, tell us a little about yourself. I know you have kind of a diverse background in a way.

Damien :

Yeah, to say the least. And again, joel, thank you so much for the opportunity to share with your listeners and appreciate the work that you all are doing. So just a brief little piece about me. I'm originally from Cleveland, ohio, currently am in Dallas, texas, and so years ago, moving from Cleveland, ohio to transition to Nashville, tennessee, I ended up going to do my undergraduate and graduate studies at Nashville, tennessee, at American Baptist College and Vanderbilt University and, of course, during my time at American Baptist College, which is a historically black college that was also connected to the civil rights movement and obviously not mentioned sometimes with the other larger institutions and individuals from the civil rights movement and individuals from the civil rights movement. It, of course, was an incubator for people like Diane Nash, julius Scruggs and Bernard Lafayette. Congressman John Lewis, ct. Vivian and other civil rights activists went to school there.

Damien :

And American Baptist College is the place where the Nashville sit-ins. They did a year's worth of training. James Lawson, of course, worked with students from Tennessee State, american Baptist College and Fisk University on that soil on the Cumberland River before they obviously went down and sought to challenge segregation. So that rich history informed so much of how I view the world, how much I informed a lot about how I view the Bible, how much I informed a lot about how I view the Bible kind of how I view the world. And so, from American Baptist College, I ended up going to Vanderbilt and then worked in the city in the public school system, served at a church and I worked for the Children's Defense Fund around the Cradle to Prison Pipeline report that they had published in 2011. And so I worked in the public school system, serving as a social and emotional specialist to about 100 African-American boys, and I was a part of an organizing team and it was the first time the Children's Defense Fund had invested in grassroots organizing.

Damien :

Children's Defense Fund, of course, started by Mary and Wright Adelman over 50 years ago as an advocacy organization, but the report that they produced in 2011 was looking at obviously, not the school to prison pipeline, but the cradle to prison pipeline.

Damien :

And so our work was rooted and grounded in challenging zero tolerance policies in the public school system.

Damien :

But it was also because, as Corrections Corporation of America, which has now changed to CoreCivic, because as Corrections Corporation of America, which has now changed to CoreCivic, the private prison industry headquarters is in Nashville.

Damien :

So it was kind of ground zero where we were looking at the connection between in-school and out-of-school suspensions, how that led to the juvenile system and how that ultimately led to the larger prison system. So the work that we were doing I was a part of a team with a gentleman who had been formally incarcerated for 28 years for a crime he did not commit and 20 of those years he spent on death row. And while he was in prison his name is Ndume Olatushani taught himself how to paint, help young people use their story, create art and help inform them about the nature of how referrals are part of a paper trail that connects them to the juvenile system and to the larger prison system. And so then from there I continued to work in the city and ultimately transitioned to Dallas to work at a church that also is a justice driven church that also sought to equip and empower folks in black communities.

Joel:

Man.

Joel:

Helping, helping kids like that, I think, is such an important you know, and such an important thing to do is to, you know, help them create a different environment that you know that they can grow up in and that they can thrive.

Joel:

And we had on a gentleman last fall who started a social enterprise to help kids that came out of disenfranchised schools connect a larger social capital, because most of the kids coming out of those areas not only do they lack financial capital a lot of times, but they lack the social capital. And he said, just giving them a few mentors that are in an industry that they want to go into connects them essentially to 10,000 people in that industry, either by second or third connections. And so just you know that social capital is actually a part of this conference that we were mentioning, the Fishing Differently conference that Sidney Williams has started, the Fishing Differently Conference that Sidney Williams has started. So then, if someone is hearing about this Fishing Differently concept and this Fishing Differently Conference for the first time out there, what would you say to them? Why are you going to this conference and why do you think others should join you?

Damien :

Well, as we were just talking about, in terms of being a product of the black church and, I think, where we are in our world. I think, the importance and value of faith, the importance of intellectual capital, social capital and human capital. I think people are looking for ways to connect, even though there are many things that obviously divide us. But in terms of where communities are, whether that's the digital divide, or whether that's lack of access to healthy food or lack of access to clean water, or just lack of access to mental health care resources, I think that it's imperative and important that people of different faiths, or people possibly who don't even have faith, still need support in realizing their potential as human beings. And so the notion of how we view capital beyond just transactionalism, but looking at it as transformational for people to be able to connect with each other, for people to be able to identify resources and for people to be able to expand and broaden their understanding of just what it means to be human and what it means to be in community. And so Fishing Differently, I think, is always about looking.

Damien :

From the biblical narrative, jesus offered something that was beyond just the spirit right. It was a full-scale feeding of the hungry. It was a full-scale, challenging systems that created policies that created toxic environments, systems that created policies that created toxic environments. It was empowering people to recognize their own agency, to be agents of change in their current conditions. And I think Fishing Differently helps faith communities in terms of that being the focus, helping churches recognize how much power they may have in community and how to leverage that power to continue to expand beyond the four walls and to impact, you know, locally, what's around that community, but even kind of broader, even with policy agendas that continue to fight back against things that ultimately diminish human flourishing.

Joel:

Yeah, I, absolutely I resonate with so much, with, with, with so much of what you're saying there, saying there. On this show we talk a lot to business owners and investors who are using their money for good. They're breaking down two-pocket thinking. They're kind of questioning the assumption that there's just one bottom line. How do you feel like the churches and the institutions of faith can question that assumption in that same way?

Damien :

Well, I think there are many. You know, knowing what Dr King and we don't just use King as a convenient default personality to fall back on but understanding that his theology right compelled him to consider when we think about where do we go from here chaos or community right compelled him to consider when we think about where do we go from here chaos or community right. His whole pressing towards a beloved community, him offering the notion of a bill of rights for the poor, because he believed that those, the decisions that we make in terms of policy, were moral documents. And one thing that James Lawson always used to say about King is that he said King understood the civic scriptures in terms of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He understood the civic scriptures just as well as he understood the biblical scriptures. And so he was intentional about what the matrimony between how he understood Jesus, as I refer to him affectionately as the holy healer from the hood who offered free health care to the most vulnerable.

Damien :

When we look at the biblical narrative, he connected Jesus with this sense of justice. And what does that mean? Not just for people, based upon zip code. As we know, zip code determines right now how long people live, but based upon them being made in the image of God, deserving all you know, all people deserving rights, the whole notion of justice being no matter where you come from, no matter sexual orientation, no matter ethnicity. You deserve access for your children, you deserve a living wage, you deserve the opportunity to continue to grow as far as personally, but also to be a benefit to your community and to your personal family.

Joel:

Yeah, how does that tie in with the work you do with DCD Empowerment?

Damien :

Yeah, Well, being a product of the black church, I was uniquely loved and I was uniquely empowered. And over the course of my life I realized because I didn't graduate from high school. And I didn't graduate from high school because I couldn't pass a proficiency test. I'm originally from Cleveland, ohio, and so what took place is that you would have to take these tests every year. You would reading, math, english, social studies and science, so you could have a 4.0 GPA, but if you could not pass all portions of that test, you could not graduate. So my life took an interesting trajectory. After I was a part of a medical biological program, had gone to school with all of my peers, but because I couldn't pass the math portion of this test, I could not get a high school diploma.

Damien :

And what I realized over the course of being out of school for seven years before I went to school, I realized as an educator, I needed to give these young men, who were like me in many ways, what I did not have as a teacher, what I did not have in terms of someone empowering me and someone who was not just looking to teach me to a test, but someone who was looking to educate me. And, as Dr King would say you know, the real reality of education is to teach one how to sift and weigh evidence, to discern between the true and the false, the real and the unreal. And ultimately, what does that do? Obviously, to empower one's sense of value in terms of if I don't pass the test, does that mean I'm not as intelligent? Does that mean that my life does not have?

Joel:

worth.

Damien :

Does that mean that my life is not significant? And so what I've done in terms of DCD empowerment is what I. What I've talked about is how do I connect talent with opportunity, build bridges that connect talent with opportunity, need with resource and passion with platform, because I really see myself more as a bridge builder, knowing that young people from communities of impoverishment struggle with self-esteem, struggle with dealing with violence, struggle with compounded trauma, which I did as well. So how do I now, as a, as an educator, really help to liberate them from the shackles of low self-esteem and insecurity, to help them realize that they have value, that they have significant, and to help broaden how we understand what it means to be intelligent, because there are multiple ways in which we sometimes look at intelligence as only one way, but there's a broader way in which it's important, I think, to kind of look at what does it mean to have different gifts and different abilities and how to find your place and find your way in the world? And so the work that we sought to do when I was a teacher it was called the Third Eye Institute, which stood for information, inspiration and imagination.

Damien :

And, as I would tell my students, I come as an adult and I'm expecting this to be an exchange.

Damien :

Just because I've lived longer doesn't necessarily mean I know more, and so I would tell them. I expect to learn from you and, of course, I hope you would be open and be willing to learn from me. I expect to give you some new information, I expect to receive it, I expect to inspire. I hope you inspire me and ultimately, how can I feed your imagination? And I think if you could feed the imagination, what that does to help you live beyond your circumstances, and it doesn't mean that you are not acknowledging them, but it means that you have maybe a different hope that allows you to still remain vigilant and resilient in the midst of what you're going through, to help push you to reach your full potential. So DCD empowerment has been nothing more than seeking to just try to empower young people, to try to help them realize their gifts and to try to offer them a counter narrative over and against the one that maybe society, or maybe even their community, or maybe even their family Right, has caused them to internalize and believe.

Joel:

Man, that's great. I cannot wait to continue this conversation with you. In part two, which is going to air next week, we're going to be talking about your work on the Gus Newport project. I'm really excited to talk with you about that, so make sure to tune in next week here to biz radio us. You can also listen to us, obviously, on all the streaming networks Spotify, iTunes um, I heart radio stitcher. We are on YouTube Um, subscribe there. Give us a like. Um, give us a comment. Interact. Give us a like. Give us a comment. Interact. Tell us what you like hearing about. We'd love to hear from all of you out there, and until next time, remember we are each other.