EP 416: How A Community-Built Mentorship Program Turns Seen And Cherished Kids Into Leaders

What makes Moses Uvere with Culture Makers a good neighbor?

What if leadership starts with being seen and cherished before anything else? We sit down with Moses Uvere, founder of Culture Makers, to unpack a mentorship model built for Title I schools that turns everyday moments into training grounds for courage, character, and service. Born and raised in Garland, Texas, and the oldest of six in a first-generation family, Moses traces how hip-hop stages led to school hallways—and how a handful of caring adults once “minded his business” in ways that changed his life.

Moses lays out the four pillars his team uses to turn values into habits: leadership talks to set a shared language, one-on-ones anchored in family, goals, and grades, parent calls that encourage and inform, and service projects that frame leadership as solving problems for others. We explore why each step matters, how it scales inside busy campuses, and what results show up when students realize their voices carry weight. The conversation also highlights a practical funding path: serving students in low socioeconomic contexts while inviting business owners and community leaders to fuel the mission through resources, mentorship, and partnerships.

Beyond the framework, Moses shares the personal convictions that drive him—resilience through family upheaval, the mentors who refused to walk away, and a lived faith that calls him to love people and build leaders. We lighten the mix with family life, game nights, movie rituals, and his backyard studio that’s half music, half podcast—hinting at what comes next for Culture Makers media. If you care about education, community impact, and raising the next generation of leaders, this conversation offers a clear playbook and an open door to help.

Listen, share with someone who mentors, and leave a review to help more neighbors find stories that move them forward. Subscribe for more local voices building real change.

To learn more about Culture Makers go to: https://vineoflife.org/culturemakers

Culture Makers

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Transcript

Meet Moses Of Culture Makers

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Sophia Yvette.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a mentorship program? Whether you are in a public school or for a police department, well, one may just be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Moses Uvert with Culture Makers. Moses, how are you today?

SPEAKER_02 0:31

I'm doing good. Impressive. That was like it sounded like that was the first time you said my last name. And that was pretty good. I ain't gonna lie. Great job.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Okay, great. Well, let's go ahead and get into things deeper. Now it is a pleasure to have you on. So please tell our listeners just a little bit more about your business and your background.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah, so I'll start with my background. Um, it's what motivates the work behind my business. Um, first and foremost, um my parents were born in Nigeria. I'm the first from my people, from my bloodline to be born in America. I'm the oldest of six, and um, and my parents named me Moses. So they had a plan for your boy to be a leader. Um, that's my background. But that's also what inspires my work and inspires the belief behind my work, which is we we want to ensure that every student I care for is seen and cherished and taught to be remarkable leaders. And we do that by uh deploying mentorship programs in the public school system.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Wow. So, since so many of our listeners today may be learning about your mentorship program for the first time, tell us a little bit more about the nature of that program.

How The Program Works

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah, so it kind of started off with us just initially wanting to meet the needs of our community. I was born and raised in Garland, Texas. I love the city, I care deeply for the city. Um, I was a hip hop artist and I was traveling, doing music, and I was really putting on for my city in that way. And the nature of it started off with me as a hip-hop artist connecting with young listeners that were just fans of my music, but they needed like fatherly, big brotherly advice. Um, from there, um, we started making partnerships in the community, we established some organizations, and then we started serving one school with 20 students. And the nature of us serving the schools kind of has like four components. One of the components is I do a leadership talk with all my kids because everyone that's with us, we um we we try to shape our conversations around being a leader. The second thing we do is we do one-on-ones. So me and my staff of mentors will come to the schools and we'll meet with kids and we'll talk to them about their family, about their parents, and about their relationships with their family and their parents. We'll talk to them about their goals and we talk to them about their grades. The third component to what we do is we call their parents and we try to encourage parents and let parents know that, man, it's not easy being a mother or father, but great job. And then we try to share things that we've learned about the students and with the mothers and fathers to kind of help inform those conversations. So it's kind of like a feedback conversation. Like as soon as you start talking about somebody's kid, they start just telling you everything. And so we um so we call parents to make that connection to encourage parents, but also learn about the students so we can have really good one-on-one times. And then our fourth component to what we do is we do service projects. We go into the community, we take our students, and we try to find some way to benefit either the school that they go to or benefit the community surrounding the school. Because we believe that great leadership isn't like bossing people around telling people what to do, but it's finding ways to solve problems and consider other people's interests above their own. So that's the nature of the work. So it's events, meeting with parents, meeting with kids one-on-one, and then leadership talks.

Who They Serve And Who Supports

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Love that. Now we know at the end of the day, marketing is the heart of every business. So who are your target demographics and how are you attracting them today?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

So this is a really good question. Really good question because who we serve is families that are in that go to Title I schools, families that are in low socioeconomic places and circumstances. That's who we serve. But who we target to be able to support our endeavors and our work is business owners, um, high affluent leaders, high affluent families, business leaders. We reach them and try to inform them of this work of us mentoring and partnering with students. And our hope is that it'll inspire them to either join us on mission with either giving of financial resources or giving um towards some of our initiatives, or even coming in the mix with us and mentoring students. So we have two demographics that we serve, which is our low social economic families, students that go to Title I schools, um, or we serve business owners, business leaders, high effluent leaders, giving them opportunities to join us on mission as we try to ensure that students are seen, cherished, and taught to be remarkable.

Building A Voice And Future Podcast

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Amen. Amen. Well, I think it is so important to make sure that we're influencing the youth in the right ways. Now, it sounds like you really have a big mission on your hands. So have you ever thought about having your own podcast to extend that mission?

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yeah, um, for sure. Uh it's definitely been something that's been in my mind and in my spirit. Um, it's funny, I I have a studio in my backyard because I told you I make music, and I still do. Um, and half of my studio is music stuff and half of my studio is podcast stuff. And I've been slowly moving towards uh taking that step. You gotta be kind of brave to step out here and you know what I'm saying, and be a podcaster. But uh eventually, yes, that's what I'm gonna do.

Family Life And Everyday Joys

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Well, authenticity is really what it's all about. Now, let's go ahead and talk a little bit more about what you and your family like to do outside of work for fun.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, yeah, I'm a husband, father, got three kids, one wife. You gotta specify that these days. And uh, I got two daughters and a son. Um, what we like to do as a family is we like to eat, so we like to go out, eat. Uh, another thing we like to do is we're a sports family, so we like to play sports outside baseball, soccer, football, basketball. And we we do that a lot. We we're a video game family. Everybody got video games, so we'll we'll play the Switch, we'll play the PlayStation, and we love watching movies. You know, we'll do like movie nights where we'll we'll pick a movie, get popcorn out, make some special treats, and kind of do that together as a family. We're pretty low-key, you know what I'm saying? We don't do anything too crazy.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Wow. So you guys are playing uh any games like Halo or Black Ops or that's back in the day.

Core Message And Personal Why

SPEAKER_02 7:52

No, my son really loves Call of Duty, so we'll play a little cottage Call of Duty, me and him, God of War, play, we'll play a little bit of that. Um, I don't like playing it too much because you know, the violence, it's a little crazy, but uh we do play it a little bit. Um, but yeah, we mainly play like Mario Kart or like stuff like that, you know, as a family.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Well, let's go ahead and circle back to your business. So, what is the number one takeaway you would like our listeners to gather from learning about culture makers? If you can just leave them with one message today.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Yeah. Um, you know, with our mission, our mission statement is that we want to ensure that every student is seen, cherished, and taught to be remarkable leaders. So that's a mission and a vision statement. So the mission is having young people first and foremost make sure that they are seen, make sure that they are cherished and then give them something, teach them something. That's our that's our mission. Our vision for the people we serve is man, we want to see young people become remarkable leaders. We want to see them have the courage to step forward to maybe do something that's a little scary or courageous for them. Or yeah, maybe it takes courage for them to step into that. The motivation behind this is a couple things. One, um, my parents got divorced when I was 10 years old. I ended up staying in the foster care system. Um my, you know, I had one of my parents uh ended up going to jail for a little bit. We had some instabilities, but we also had some like wonderful, powerful moments of other voices, mentors, leaders, pastors that came into my life to help me become who I'm striving to be. And so the thing I want listeners to hear from me is this you may not have the giftings of a of a musician or of a speaker or something like that, but you do have something to contribute to the world. Um I'm not the most gifted person, but I saw that, man, there are people that really fought for me, that wanted the best for me. And even though I was difficult with them, even though I might have hurt and harmed them, they still looked out for me. I found it valuable when someone invaded my life, and instead of minding their business, their own business, they started minding my business. And with them minding my business, it changed my life. And that's something that um I would hope that if someone's watching this would take the time and say, who's someone's business that I can mind for the sake of their well-being, for the sake of who they could become? That's my hope and prayer is that that our work can inspire other people to love other people and fight for other people. So that's motivation one. Motivation two for me is I believe in Jesus, I believe in God, and I've encountered God in my early 20s. He's real, super duper real. Met him, it's real. That encounter has motivated and inspired me to go out here and pursue these young people and not let them go to hell around us. So that would be my encouragement, man. Um, is to if you can love God and love other people and put their interest above your own.

Where To Learn More

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Amen. Amen to all of that. Now, Moses, I love the message that you shared with us all today. However, we are almost out of time. So, one final question for you where can our listeners go to learn more about culture makers?

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Yeah, you can go to face, you can go on Facebook, you can go to Culture Makers USA, Instagram, CultureMakers USA. You can go to vineoflife.org slash culture makers that tells you more about our program and kind of the details of it. And yeah, that's where we at right now.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Well, Moses, I really appreciate you being on the show today, and we wish you and your mission the best.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

I appreciate that, man. For real. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNP Frisco dot com. That's GNP Frisco dot com or call four six nine two two two one nine three four four four four four five.