Supporting boys and young men of color so that they connect to and thrive in Detroit’s new economy.

My Brother’s Keeper is a nationwide initiative that launched in 2014 when President Obama asked communities across the country to take up the charge of closing opportunity gaps for boys and men of color. The Skillman Foundation, City of Detroit, and hundreds of local leaders came together to form MBK Detroit, setting five goals to ensure boys and young men of color were prepared for and connected to opportunity in Detroit.

A signature project, the MBK Detroit Innovation Challenge, was developed in 2016 by the Skillman Foundation and Campaign for Black Male Achievement. The Challenge called upon community members to put forth their ideas to increase opportunities for black and brown boys.

Cohort 1

With the launch of the first cohort, nearly 500 submissions were received. Twenty teams spent the summer of 2016 testing their ideas with the help of training, support and $5,000 in funding. In September 2016, the teams presented their learnings and plans for their organization’s future to community members and a panel of judges. Six teams were awarded $50,000 and ongoing training to scale their work, supported by JP Morgan Chase & Co. Four final awardees were featured at six-week-long Capstone Expo in downtown Detroit in the fall of 2017.

Cohort 2

The 2018-19 iteration of the challenge included a My Sister’s Keeper component, encouraging ideas to support girls and young women of color. Twenty semifinalists were selected from nearly 650 applications. Teams went through a  prototyping phase in which they each received $5,000 and were engaged in a series of workshops and training sessions to help develop, test, and strengthen their programs to ensure feasibility and impact. Five teams were awarded $50,000 and ongoing training to scale their work, supported by JP Morgan Chase & Co and the Ford Motor Company Fund.

Detroit was one of ten cities nationwide to receive a 2018 grant from the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) Alliance Impact Cities program, a national competition to identify and invest in communities that are making steady progress to substantially improve the lives of boys and young men of color. It was established by former President Barack Obama to continue much of the life-changing work he began while in the White House and was made possible thanks to support from the Ford Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Microsoft.

Following President Obama’s announcement that Detroit’s Black Family Development Inc. won a $500,000 grant from the MBK Alliance, the funds were matched by another $500,000 from The Skillman Foundation to continue work on restorative practices and justice training programs.

In Their Words

Experience Detroit through the eyes and words of its youth. An important component of My Brother’s Keeper Detroit is amplifying the voices of young men of color in the city and helping to share their experiences. Hear directly from several young men as they share their perspective on growing up in Detroit.

Learn More About My Brother’s Keeper Detroit