From Prison to Power!
Invest in a Future of African Community Economic Self-Determination!
Your support gives a fighting chance to our community members returning from the colonial prison system and allows them to participate in their own liberation!
It also brings economic life back into our community!
We are completing the renovations at the new Buy Black Power retail space! and will then open up to serve the community.
1. Entrepreneurial training program: The building is the future home of our entrepreneurial training program for people returning to our community from the colonial prison system. Participants will learn skills needed to run their own businesses.
2. Retail Space: The building will house a beautiful community retail space that will feature products from throughout the Uhuru Movement and our community, sustaining our programs. So customers are not just “buying black,” but supporting the return of economic and political power back in our own hands. This is “Buy Black Power.”
African Independence Workforce Program Entrepreneurial Training
The Buy Black Power retail space will be home to the entrepreneurial training center for the African Independence Workforce Program (AIWP). The AIWP is a different workforce program than others, because we do not assume that something is wrong with our community. We know that the conditions of poverty and oppression in our community are part of a colonial assault on our whole community. AIWP is another piece of the Black Power Blueprint that is contending with this assault, and putting economic and political power back in our hands!
AIWP provides beautiful housing, work-experience internships to learn job-readiness skills, training so participants feel empowered to re-enter our community, and access to healthcare, transportation, and other services that provide stability.
Outside the AIWP housing Inside the AIWP housing
Buy Black Power Retail Space
The Black Power Building is located on Natural Bridge in North St. Louis, a major thoroughfare in our community.
The retail space will feature high-quality, one-of-a-kind products from NZO: African Styles at Home and Abroad, Uhuru Planet: Reparations Apparel and Uzi: Thread of Freedom and so much more.
As APEDF President Ona Zene’ Yeshitela has said, this store will be a beautiful retreat for anyone wanting to wind down from a long day, see what’s new, be inspired and take pride in reclaiming our stolen African culture. This vibrant retail space will help to build economic growth on this corridor!
Part of the Greater Black Power Blueprint
¨We are driven by African self-determination, a sense of pride and a vision for a prosperous future once again."
-- Ona Zene Yeshitela, president of APEDF and visionary leader of the Black Power Blueprint
AIWP and the Buy Black Power building are all part of the larger Black Power Blueprint, a rapidly growing suite of programs that spans the West Florissant corridor of North St. Louis and beyond, taking abandoned properties and transforming them into programs that address our ability to feed, clothe, employ, and house ourselves, including a community center, bakery cafe, outdoor venue space, basketball court, gardens, and much more on the way including a radio station and a community farm.
The Black Power Blueprint is a project of the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF), the baddest non-profit on the planet, that has the power to transform the future for our African people, providing genuine solutions to disparities and injustice in every aspect of our lives.
What You Can Do
APEDF owns the building and it is almost complete. We repaired the roof after tornado damage, installed electrical systems, and upgraded the storefront. Now we must install plumbing so the building can enter its final stretch of renovations, fully open, and serve the community.
We need YOUR HELP to get us across the finish line.
As President Ona Zené says, "Agency has been taken away from the African community, the Black Power Blueprint is giving it back!"
Invest today in a future of African self-determination!
