Curtis Carmichael is an award-winning social entrepreneur, technologist, STEM and hip-hop teacher, and computer programmer. He is also the author and mobile app developer for the world’s first augmented reality memoir, Butterflies in the Trenches, a candid story of Curtis' life in the public housing projects in Scarborough, Ont.
Curtis stopped by the Leading With Nice Interview Series to talk about the importance of embracing community, life lessons from mentors, and his mission to help everyone realize they have the power to make a difference in not only their lives, but the lives of those around them.
Curtis Carmichael is an award-winning social entrepreneur, technologist, STEM and hip-hop teacher, and computer programmer. He is also the author and mobile app developer for the world’s first augmented reality memoir, Butterflies in the Trenches, a candid story of Curtis' life in the public housing projects in Scarborough, Ont.
Curtis stopped by the Leading With Nice Interview Series to talk about the importance of embracing community, life lessons from mentors, and his mission to help everyone realize they have the power to make a difference in not only their lives, but the lives of those around them.
[00:00:00.070] - Speaker 1
When you create an opportunity for kids to become builders and creators in this economy and in this marketplace, then people are going to be able to get gainfully employed. They're going to be able to get funding for their businesses. They're going to be able to be financially literate, to become financially free, to ensure that they have generational wealth. Our long-term goal is to future-proof these communities very tangibly. And I believe you can't do that by showing up at 18 — because it's too late.
[00:00:38.010] - Speaker 2
Good day and welcome to the Leading With Nice Interview Series podcast. My name is Mathieu Yuill and we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results. So today's guest I've actually known about probably for like maybe on a decade. I've heard his name and we never crossed paths, but oddly enough, we were kind of in the same neighborhood and I would always hear about the things he was doing. His name is Curtis Carmichael, and if you've heard about him, don't be surprised because I'm going to read you a bit of his bio. He's a social entrepreneur, technologist, STEM, and hip hop teacher. So definitely I'm going to drop some bars, see what he says later on. Computer programmer, former director of Code Nidges franchise. He is the author and mobile app developer of the world's first augmented reality memoir, Butterflies in the Trenches, which is his book. We'll talk about that due to sales programmer, which my actual University educated programmer, when he saw his stuff was like, okay, now I'm insecure about my job. This guy is teaching himself how to program. I don't know what's up. And one of the areas that he really was in my life in my social feed is he rode across Canada.
[00:01:54.410] - Speaker 2
He cycled across Canada on the Ride for Promise to raise funds for Promise in Toronto. Now to hold their paragraph, we're going to link to the site of his bio because he does so much. One I want to pull out here is he is a duo athlete for the 2021 Multisport World Championships. So yeah, there's that. And I love that. The precursor to that duo athlete is in his spare time. He is a Team Canada duo athlete. I love it. It's like, oh, by the way, in my spare time, I'm still achieving a lot. So I just think it's great. But we're going to talk about a few things that he's doing right now that if you are a leader, if you are looking to make change, two things, you're going to find inspiration what Curtis is doing. But also, I guarantee you probably want to connect and partner with Curtis in some way. So, Curtis, welcome to the program and thanks for making time. I know clearly you're a busy guy.
[00:02:50.080] - Speaker 1
Yeah. No, honestly, it's a privilege. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to be here. Time to discuss and platforms. I'm always appreciative. So thanks for having me out. And I'm excited.
[00:03:00.810] - Speaker 2
Of course. Also, for those of you who are long time listeners, you know, a lot of our listeners are in the States and they're spread across North America. I am based in Toronto, specifically Scarborough. Curtis is also a Scarborough kid, so you might hear some Thompson Park references or Albert Campbell Square folk dance jambury references. You never know.
[00:03:23.700] - Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:03:24.290] - Speaker 2
Did you ever do folk dance jamboree or is that like am I?
[00:03:27.570] - Speaker 1
But not when I was in Starbucks when I left.
[00:03:30.270] - Speaker 2
Oh, okay. All right. Cool beans. Okay, listen, so the first thing I want to do to give listeners, can you give us some context just around your story? So not a deep dive with just some high level stuff, a little bit of background of your youth, what led you into the cross country ride and how that led into the Source code Academy. So just like to give people the ethos of who you are and what you experienced and why you're here today.
[00:03:52.540] - Speaker 1
Definitely. I'd like to start off by saying what my mission statement is because it'll ground my story. Ever since I was a kid, growing up with a family that came from South America in a small country called Guyana, we landed in Toronto Community Housing. Once we got here, we lived in every Toronto Community Housing neighborhood, from Regent Park to Galloway to Morton Park, all the way to the neighborhood called Kataraki. So for people who don't know what Toronto Community Housing is, Toronto Housing is the largest social housing provider in Canada and the second largest in North America, next to New York State. So ever since I was a kid, my mom is telling me that my mission statement should be no Child Left Behind. So my whole goal and everything I do is I just want to help everyone to realize that we all have the name, power and the gifts to actually make a difference in our lives, in our community. So that manifests a lot of different ways. So my origin story, growing up in Scarborough, in the Toronto Community Housing area, I didn't know what was happening. But later on, I realized that our neighborhoods are designed that way.
[00:04:48.850] - Speaker 1
They strategically underfunded. Schools are underfunded, high youth unemployment rate, parents working multiple jobs. We have PhDs, but they're not valid here. So it's one of those things where a lot of us kids, if you can't get employed, then the streets employ you. So the streets employed us and gave us an opportunity to know we get some extra money to buy extra food, to buy groceries, to buy braces at a friend who bought braces to pay the light bill, to buy cool clothes, to pay, to travel and play sports. So that's kind of my upbringing. But as I age through that, I realized a lot of the village around me, like you said, it takes a village to raise a child. A lot of my mentors weren't only the typical camp counselor, the typical teacher. It was actually people who were on the street that were accessible to me. So a lot of my mentors were drug dealers, were former inmates, people who are working multiple jobs, a grandmother who was a grandparent for the whole neighborhood. These kinds of people got me into the literacy, into reading at a young age and got me into technology at a young age.
[00:05:46.880] - Speaker 1
And I was able to stop selling drugs at a young age due to a guy who actually got incarcerated. The guy who taught me once how to do the streets, he actually got incarcerated and taught me how to read. He gave me books on finances and mental health and STEM education and the future of work at a time of, like, 2006. This is before social media boom. So he was spot on. But he started to let me know that the way they design our schools were set up to go to prison. They stream us into courses below their ability. We'll go into that a bit later. So they deny us all these educational outcomes. So I was able to, with his guidance, fast forward, went to University on an academic athletic scholarship, went to Ontario Tech for a Stem education degree, teaching degree. Thought I was going to go play pro. I had a severe, I would say career ending injury. I had a concussion. And I decided, do I want to have a short life and be well known because I was on track to go play pro as I was talking to some teams in the CFL, Hamilton highglass and the Red Blacks, or I want to have a long life and not be known.
[00:06:46.300] - Speaker 1
So I chose I want to have a long life and not be known. So I actually hung up my cleats instead of going to play pro, moved back to my Toronto community housing neighborhood. And I asked them while I was teaching, how can I be of service? And I still have that mindset. No Child Left Behind. They lost about 100K in funding. And I'm like, you know what? I ride across the country because I have to think of something crazy enough to raise money. So I'm like, all right, across the country, I'll raise money. So we ended up raising 100K over 60 days cycling across Canada in 2017. But that whole movement was me leading a team about would have been about 200 people at the end, both people here, but also all the accommodations and speaking events across the city. So that's kind of like what led to the ride. The ride was literally someone saying, we have a problem. Curtis, could you help us with the solution? And me being back, not playing pro, the only thing I could think of is how do I do something crazy enough to help out this after school program?
[00:07:35.740] - Speaker 1
Because if they close down in all their sites in Rexville, in my neighborhood, and in January, Finch kids won't have the opportunities because everything else is closed. So that's kind of what led me to the ride across the country. And then now to end that off, we'll go into a bit later. But now I'm the founder of Source Code Academy Canada. It's Canada's first culture focused Academy that prepares children and youth for their future work, specifically focusing on buy, pocket and loan for kids.
[00:08:01.230] - Speaker 2
My first job out of College was working at Warden Woods for Centennial College, which was like my bus stop was Kataraki. And I don't think people recognize that the environment you just described might be around the corner from them or down the street. They picture it like, oh, it's like HBO's The Wire. There's literally train tracks that kind of separate this. But these are areas that are just right in the rest of our neighborhoods. And I think the reason why I highlighted that is in my journeys. I don't think there is a true deep understanding of why there's a need for accelerators like source Code. So could you just explain the difference between the experience of, say, an 18 year old kid like myself who grew up a privileged life, white, middle class family, and maybe a kid that you now serve and just help us understand why that is so necessary?
[00:09:00.960] - Speaker 1
Yes, I think the best way to explain that is to give people a bird's eye view, contextual understanding of what's happening. So there's a group of people that came over to this part of the world called Turtle Island. And when they came over here, they sat at a table and said, we need to create systems and institutions that benefit us. That was literally what they did. They created systems and institutions that benefit them. Education, financial, real estate, anything you could think of, the goal was to benefit them. The problem is to them who is at the table. When you look at the table, it was only white people at that table and specifically white men. And they created these institutions that still exist today. That's what people call colonial institutions, institutions we inherited that aren't designed to benefit everybody. And when you look at the origin of the intention, that was the intention. I always say everything is hardware and software. So they made the hardware to only benefit them. So all we've been doing is updating the software. But it doesn't matter how much we get a new app, update, a new feature. The hardware of our country is inherently biased.
[00:10:09.270] - Speaker 1
So that's not only America, that's Canada. Canada is just better at branding that we're not America, but essentially the same hoods that you see that are in the news in America are the same hoods that exist here. So that's kind of the contextual understanding of just understanding the experience of someone who grows up in a lonesome community or someone who comes from a black, Indigenous or personal color community. The outcomes across all major institutions, black and Indigenous people cannot have the poorest outcomes. And that's actually by design. That's not because of who the people are. The systems are set up in a certain way that denies opportunities and then denies them an opportunity to be successful. So they have to not only work harder, that's not only the mindset. The reality is that even if you work hard, those things are still not guaranteed. Because for me, it was hard for me to break into the tech industry, even as an accomplished person, hard to break into author a speaker list goes on and on. And I realized it doesn't matter what level of society you were at, income wise, we're still black, we're still Indigenous, still from this community.
[00:11:12.640] - Speaker 1
So that's kind of the big picture contextual understanding. So to explain the difference between someone who grows up in affluent community with resources and opportunities versus someone who might grow up in a low income or a community that I call the hood is that when you live in an area like Young and Eglinton, Youngton is the most the wealthiest area in Toronto, and they have resources everywhere you go, one city block, they have multiple robotics and coding centers, they have Stem centers, makerspaces, lawyers, doctors, offices, dentists, 15 fresh food markets, ten grocery stores, ten banks list goes on and on and on. You start to go to other communities, you start to realize they have nothing. The only thing we have is poor city transit. Because you notice if you look at any city in North America where the transit is the worst or where grocery stores are less frequent, usually tend to be in loancome or black Indigenous communities. So that's strategic that's by design, typically you see cash and payday loan places, fast food places. So you start to see that structurally they're designing our communities to suffer. So that's kind of when you understand conceptually that access to resources and information is class based.
[00:12:26.250] - Speaker 1
So we're denied these opportunities just based on location. But then we're also denying these opportunities just because of what we look like. So that's kind of the contextual understanding of like, okay, what now, Curtis? And the what now is if we were to bring everyone back from the 1800, what's the only thing they'll recognize when they come back? Schools and prisons, that's an issue. And when you see that, then you start to understand what's different with schools and prisons. Because when we integrated in public schools, what happened? The rise of private schools began. So when we integrated, they segregated. So that's what you have to start to see when you look at all the private schools, the majority of private schools in Canada, like the States, are predominantly high income and majority white. Then you start to realize we're creating the same systems. We're just calling them different names. So that's the contextual understanding now to bring source code in the mix. So when source code is Brandon As, Canada's first culture focused Academy that prepares children and youth for the future work, our goal is we want to be able to create an idea where how can we have no child left behind?
[00:13:32.820] - Speaker 1
So our mission is we want to empower global leaders from buyback and loan communities to embrace the global innovation economy as builders and creators. So what does that look like? That means we democratize access to tech, Stem education, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship by holistically caring for the community's mental health. So that's kind of where source code comes in, is that we want to partner with communities and schools in order to bridge that gap. Because society prepares our communities up from school to prison. We want to bridge the gap between the streets and the new Silicon Valley. So we're kind of creating our own pathway from kindergarten to industry.
[00:14:08.150] - Speaker 2
Is one of your centers at like Young editing or Young and St. Clair in Toronto. Is that where you're doing some work?
[00:14:13.890] - Speaker 1
I run a coworking space that's separate. Like I run a coworking business space.
[00:14:18.110] - Speaker 2
You have shared with me that you had met some kids there from private school that didn't even know a public school kid.
[00:14:22.720] - Speaker 1
Oh, no. Many yes. Majority of people I meet in Midtown never been to a housing project before. Yeah. They only know about it from the news. And the news doesn't show the full picture.
[00:14:31.530] - Speaker 2
Right. And one of the things that we talked before in November, December, and I was really fascinated by a lot of the concepts you were speaking. I knew about them from an academic standpoint, but you had really brought some way to help me understand it. Tangibly and you recommended a book, The Marathon Don't Stop, the Life and Times of Nipsey Hussle and talking about black ownership of banks and real estate. It never even crossed my field of view that that would have been a barrier as well. I don't know if there's a question in there or not. I'm sharing with listeners.
[00:15:06.430] - Speaker 1
Here's the question. I think what you're referring to. I didn't talk a bit about my book, but I just put in an explanation of how Nipsey Hussle led to my book in my book led to source code. So Nipsey Hussle's story is that he's the best example in the world at elevating the social and economic fabric of a disenfranchised community. He was a former dropout. He got blamed for stealing the computers at the library, and he wasn't he wasn't even on camera. So they sent him to a last chance education facility. And at the school, opportunities are limited. So he's like, I'm just going to drop out. He dropped out and he started to do what I learned from a guy who taught me in the streets. He started to get access to books, financial literacy, mental health, the business around music, how to start your own clothing company, how to own real estate, how to start a coworking space, how to prepare for the future. So Nipsey fast forward. He did pass away at 33, but he was able to have, I think they looked at the number of something like over $200 million in assets.
[00:16:01.770] - Speaker 1
So we own multiple real estate all around his community. He had his own coworking space, which is a place for people to build their business, grow their business, get funding for the business, and launch their business in his neighborhood. And then most of his wealth came from music. But he had this concept that was named after his record label, All Money In, No Money Out Records. So he invested all his gains from music and clothing and business and real estate back into the community. And he said at the end of his life, he would have assisted or employed over 40,000 people. And he was just 33. So when he started to see that mindset actually went down to visit and met some people on his team. And I realized they're building something called Too Big to Fail. So it was below his coworking space and business center, which is called Vector 92. Big to Fail was going to be kind of what source code was, but in La, but he wasn't able to see it fully through because he passed away. So I was inspired to really show people that the most innovative and talented place in the world is actually the hood, both locally and globally.
[00:16:59.510] - Speaker 1
But in order to prove that, I wanted to write my story and then at the end of my story, there are 30 other stories of people around the world who are just like us, trying to prove that mentality that the opportunity is not universal. Talent is. So that's kind of what led to the book. And then the book kind of manifested to the actual Academy. So it actually shows that a lot of my work is directly inspired by Nipsey Hussle in his life as well. And also the book is the weird thing about it. In America, there's a lot of books for people who grew up in the hood. In Kanata, there's like one or two that's it. So just reality. It's like, how am I one of the first folks about breaking the cycle of property and equipping you to do the same? That's the first problem.
[00:17:37.810] - Speaker 2
I want to talk about source code. What types of activities will be happening there? Like give us an example of what kids will be learning code, practical applications. How do you envision the source code supporting BIPOC kids to get ahead?
[00:17:51.680] - Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely. So when I talk about and also I want to put a Disclaimer first when I say bypass is just for the sake of just saying something quick. But black Indigenous people, Calce, have very different experiences, very unique experiences. So when we think of having programming at Source Code Academy. Our goal is we want to focus on buyback and loan from communities. But I'll explain the curriculum pathway, but at first I'll say how it actually operates. So essentially our phase one is events and workshops in the existing communities that we're in. So we're in Cataracti, the community I grew up in. So we'll be partnering with Urban Promised Toronto, which is a charity that has been existing in there, and it's also Warden Woods Community Center. So our goal is to use existing community spaces in Scarborough, but then also I'm going to partner across the bridge with Teasdale. So these are communities I've gone to school in my whole life as a child, so I want to really start there as the foundation. So then after events and workshops start there, our next step is to get into schools to run events and workshops in schools.
[00:18:46.890] - Speaker 1
After that step, phase three, we want to actually start programs in other communities. So satellite locations we call community chapters. So after community chapters, our goal is to secure space where we can run our programming in person and online from an actual space that we own. And we have different Academy spaces in there. So that's kind of the pathway just so they understand it. So how it actually works curriculum wise, when we're running events and workshops. There are two things I want to explain when we talk about our main pillars of financial literacy, Stem and Steam education and entrepreneurship. You cannot teach these communities and our community how to prepare for the future work without holistically caring for them. So that's why our six pillars of care are focused on the creative arts, mental health. We have fitness and nutrition, social emotional learning, literacy and language arts. And the last one is social justice. So that's kind of the six pillars. If you can care for the community and have that incorporated programming when they show up, there could be different programs on for young people, which someone just hit me up of their creators.
[00:19:48.230] - Speaker 1
They're artists in my neighborhood, so we're trying to get them to understand crypto and NFPs and how they can figure out how to use that as another stream of the revenue as an artist. So we're able to run workshops on that specific thing for another one. When it comes to hitting the bias within AI, it's not about just teaching kids how to code. That's not the goal. Our goal is how do you help kids create value? Coding is just a tool. So that's kind of like the ideas we have. We have different ideas for themes for different programs, but how we're going to focus on it are going to be very different. It's hard for kids to learn how to code if they don't have literacy. So a lot of kids are two to three grade levels behind in reading and writing by grade three. And that's structural that has nothing to do with the communities, how our school supports them. So we may run our programs, which is one that we're hoping to run right now. It's pairing literacy with coding. So we're supporting them first with literacy development, and then we're combining with coding.
[00:20:38.450] - Speaker 1
I'm a programmer myself. If you're not proficient with comprehension and reading, coding is very difficult. So that's kind of where I come in as someone who knows what I'm doing in that space. And I'm at a coding robotics center myself not too long ago. So that's kind of how the ideas is going to form. We got to ask the community what they want and if it's a specific subject area, like, hey, our finances are not in check. So we sent a financial coach over the last year to the neighborhood. We talked about financial literacy and entrepreneurship. So every week was a different focus. One focus was on credit, another focusing on understanding what your bank is doing. Another one is like, how does real estate work? Okay, if you're a freelancer or sole provider or incorporation, how do you do taxes? How do you manage your invoices? So we're giving kids very tangible stuff. They don't get in school, but it's all based on different things that the community needs. And we connected to our pillows currently.
[00:21:30.650] - Speaker 2
Just to understand how kids in the low income communities that you've worked with, I'm sure it's not a build it and they will come scenario, how do they get into the programs you're offering? And when we're talking about potential outcome, what are we actually trying to achieve? Like, is it parity? Is it onto the next level education? What is it?
[00:21:56.310] - Speaker 1
Yeah. So the next thing I've got a mission like no Child Left Behind is very specific, to be honest. No education system has that as a mission statement.
[00:22:04.640] - Speaker 2
No. Well, you say last chance education is certainly not in line with that mission statement.
[00:22:09.050] - Speaker 1
Yeah. That's not usually once you graduate grade twelve, it's like good luck. So our mission of no Child Left Behind is very clear. Our long term mission is we want to build an inclusive world that includes us, all our institutions. That's not their mission statement. So that's kind of our long term vision. How that actually looks like is that when you create an opportunity for kids to become builders and creators in this economy and into this marketplace, then people are going to be able to get gained fully employed. They're going to be able to get funding for their businesses. They're going to be able to be financially literate, to become financially free, to ensure that they have generational wealth. Our long term goal is to future proof these communities very tangibly. And I believe you can't do that by showing up at 18 because it's too late. Like a lot of these kids, I lost 20 people at the age of eleven, a fourth of them to death. By suicide. Half of them to gun violence. The other half were incarcerated and died in prison. So you can't come to a neighborhood living in another community and come in as an expert.
[00:23:13.790] - Speaker 1
You're not an expert. The people who live there are the experts. Any listeners here, it's more of like a reality check for all of us. It's not just me, the neighborhood I grew up in, it's in the neighborhood that still exists today. So I don't come there as an expert, even though I'm from there. I come as in like the kids are now the experts of the Day To day. They're there Day to day. So my goal is to partner with them. And they respect that because they know me, they know my family, they know I used to do drug dealers when I was a kid. So they understand the nature. So all that to say is in order to build that world that includes us all, we actually have to ensure no Child Left Behind. And how you do that is working with kids earlier, from kindergarten all the way to grade twelve, and you give them the programming that they need to become not only financially free, but also to be holistically careful. You want to make sure their mental health is in check. Because for me personally, I'm living with PTSD. I've gone through depression, anxiety myself, but they don't have the supports early on.
[00:24:09.440] - Speaker 1
And I'll say comparable people go off to war, come back sick, but they train to go. People living in these communities don't prepare for what they see, and then their mental health isn't normalized as like something's not like that's not okay for people to go through. So long story short, I think that's the long term goal of no Child Left Behind. I think that's a mission a lot of us could really believe in. So it's not just like, oh, this is a thing for this community. Because when you say buy, pocket and loan communities, a better word for buyback is actually racialized. Racialized is better than minorities because visible minorities were not the minority. A lot of people who are not white are the majority. So racialized is just a process of that. These racial groups have been created. So it's actually a better term than bipolar. But all that to say is for people who are listening, how can I apply this to what I'm doing? We need to figure out what our actual goal is. A lot of people ask me, how can I help? How can I support, how can I do what you're doing?
[00:25:04.840] - Speaker 1
My always thing is like, identify what you're passionate about, what you care about. And then the next goal is to figure out your purpose and mission. People have it backwards. They think they find their passion, then their purpose and then their mission. It's different. You have a passion, you figure out a cause beyond yourself. That's a mission. And then your path of that you get to your mission is your purpose. I had no Child Left Behind since I was a kid. I always liked speaking and teaching since I was a young person. So when I got older, I just continued holding the teaching and speaking and I always had that mission in mind. Like no Child Left Behind. I want to build an inclusive world that includes all of us. Then it became easy for me to do source code with a whole bunch of people who are part of my team because now the pathway to accomplish source code, that's my purpose. Now that's kind of what I say for people listening is people are very quick to do things. But I'm very big on what is your long term places for self interest?
[00:26:02.510] - Speaker 1
Is this for you to climb the corporate ladder? Is this for you to get a charitable receipt? Is it for you to exert your own opinion on a community? Or is it for you to build with the community and just provide, hey, how can I be of service and what they say we do? We aren't the experts. So that's kind of a long story Schott that we could talk about for days. But a lot of communities ask me, how can I support? I'm like the first thing, stop doing stuff. You need to listen.
[00:26:27.890] - Speaker 2
Yes, dude, that's the name of this podcast. Stop doing stuff. Start listening. That is amazing.
[00:26:36.000] - Speaker 1
That's it.
[00:26:36.670] - Speaker 2
That's your next book, by the way.
[00:26:39.170] - Speaker 1
Stop doing stuff. Just listen, dude.
[00:26:43.070] - Speaker 2
So people by now they're like, Yo, this man has articulated what's been in my heart. I just have not had the words for it. But I don't want to do it myself because clearly I've learned I don't have it. So how do they support you? What do they do? What do you need? Tell me right now. I'd love to hear, what do I need right now and then also like longer term?
[00:27:02.790] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I'll say short term. Long term. And I'll also say a preface before because I always want to have people have practical actionables for everything they do in life. The best way is for you to give yourself and always say, like, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. So the best thing you got to think about is it's not only about resources, it's about your time. I'm skill sharing. I'm a guy who's a teacher, a programmer, I'm an entrepreneur. So I work within my Avenue and I give resources in my Avenue, whether it's money, equipment, or I give my time through mentorship. So a lot of people just need to stay in their lanes because in your Lane you're good. You can go on other lanes. But sometimes your Lane is something you need to really hold on to. So short term is for people to check out the website, believe it or not, sourcecodeacademy CA and when they check out the website, they'll learn a lot more about what it is and how to get involved. So you can type that in sourcecodeacademycanada. Ca you see some of our early partners that are part of the project, some of them are still articulating what that might be.
[00:28:07.830] - Speaker 1
But a cool part of that would be, you see Queens University on Territory University, Toronto. Toronto Community Housing just had a soft confirmation from Pinball Clements Foundation. I've done work with Pinball Pinball. He wrote the forward of my book as well. And then we're partnered with something called Nifty Kids, which is an NFP crypto project that a large percentage of their funds, once they're successful, is going to be donated to source code. So that's go to the website is the first thing. Number two, people are going to be like, oh, can I donate money? No, what I want to say is reach out to me throughout the website. I have another team that might go through it as well. We have a director of Trees Partnerships just reached out and said, hey, we have 20 computers. How can we be of service? They're donating eight to us and twelve to another Indigenous organization. So when we get those eight desktop computers, because if you're a school or business or you're connected to a business or a company, you renew your tech equipment every three years or every two years. So donate those computers, the tablets, the hardware, we can use it.
[00:29:07.180] - Speaker 1
Even if it's broken, my young people can fix it. They know what to do. They're geniuses. So that's one thing. Equipment is number one, finances. We're trying to figure out how to really handle that right now because our main goal right now is we're focusing on curriculum development and hiring talent. So if you're interested in donating, I'd rather them not donate. You can just go to the website. We actually change the submission so you can't donate. Finances, if you're interested to donate, it sends a submission form where you get in touch with us. So we'll outline to you and we'll give you an actual outline of our main line item is to hire a full time director of operations to do programming every day, every week. Because I can't do it. I'm the guy who shakes hands, I'm the guy who makes the connections. I'm the guy who if things in the right spot. So that's kind of what our line item right now is getting money to donate to hire a Yuill time person, because five of us are kind of working part time on it while we're trying to secure funding and secure more space.
[00:30:04.220] - Speaker 1
So definitely equipment is number one. Number two, if you're interested in financial donations, get in touch through the website. And number three, believe it or not, actually go through the website. The fourth one is just a book plug. If you still need to understand what I mean by these neighborhoods, both locally and globally in the hood, are the most innovative and talented place in the entire planet. That's a bold statement to say. If you don't believe it, read the book and then call me. If you call me after reading the book, I'll refund you. I'll refund you. I have nothing to lose. The thesis was proved, and I think when you read it, you'll start to understand that this is not only Curtis, this is a kid in Malawi. This is a kid in Camden, New Jersey. This is a kid in South London. This is a kid in a small marginalized coupon in Australia and New Zealand. And you start to see, like, this story of butterflies in the trenches just to close this off. Butterflies. The only way they can survive is by eating nutrients and minerals from the mud. So that's actually why I called my book Butterflies and Treacherous, because I believe the past is actually the building blocks for our future.
[00:31:06.560] - Speaker 2
Curtis, this has been amazing. A few people I need to thank a few people, but also, I've never done this before. If you're listening to this podcast, you like it. I've never asked before. And people kept on saying, you're so silly for asking. Can you please give us a five star rating on whatever platform you're listening to? Apparently, that helps. Yeah, we got great, but I should ask for it. So please take a few minutes. Leave us some love. I'll be forever grateful. People. I want to thank that make this thing come together. Naomi, who helps with the questions, she helps book. She's our executive assistant project manager. So much more here at Leading with Nice. Jamie Hunter is our content manager. So if you see this on social, he's a guy that made sure it got out. Amber Tompkins is our education and training coordinator. And while I'm doing all this kind of stuff you talked about shaking hands. When I'm doing this podcast, I see the slack channel blowing up. She's taking care of business while I'm in here doing this. Victoria McCartney has also been helping us some social, taking stuff off our plate.
[00:32:04.290] - Speaker 2
I super appreciate her. My wife Alison keeps the kids and dogs at Bay while I'm in the basement doing podcasts.
[00:32:11.510] - Speaker 1
Yeah, you got to do that, right?
[00:32:13.570] - Speaker 2
And so I just got to say thank you to all the people. Naomi, Amber, Jamie, Jeff Anhorn is our video guy. So if you're seeing this on Social and Stories or on YouTube, he's the guy who put it all together. And Austin Pomeroy's are audio editor. And man, like, my voice is actually four octaves higher than what you're hearing right now. He makes me sound luscious. So thank you, Austin, for that. And he's going to make this sound great. So, Curtis, thank you. So, Curtis Carmichael, Casorurcecodeacademycanada CA, check it out. You heard the action items. I'd love for you. If you reach out to Curtis I'd love to drop me a note or leave it in the comments. How or what you see yourself? Intersecting. Thank you so much for making time for us today.
[00:32:54.570] - Speaker 1
Amazing. Thank you. I'm so happy. I can't wait to listen to back this looks give me a good one. Alright? Take care.