10 Lessons on 10 Years of Founding a Non-Profit

I grew up as a child always being told by my mother, "If you have the ability to help someone else, you should." That simple statement was ingrained in me in a deep way that from a young age - I had a mission to serve.

Although this mission felt very true to who I was, I began to understand the world actually saw this as irony. A young brown girl born with one hand is always trying to help others - shouldn't she be the one being helped? What people saw as my greatest tragedy, I saw as my greatest strength as it fueled my understanding of resilience and what it means to overcome.

The Simple Good is an extension of myself. It was a solution inspired by my own challenges of facing oppression and hopelessness that continues to be put upon me, and people like me, because of how I was born into this world - a woman, a person of color, a person born with one hand, aka imperfect. This program was my solution to stopping people from cutting short our possibilities because of stereotypes and assumptions. By empowering youth to overcome adversity and fuel positive activism through art, resilience and positivity, I have been able to grow a community and movement that celebrates the simple good in our lives thus building empathy and breaking down the barriers we set up for ourselves.

This year will be our 10 year anniversary since I founded The Simple Good. Since our founding, we have been able to serve 5,600 youth across the globe to find their meaning of 'the simple good' in their lives. This feat has forced me to pause and reflect on the lessons learned from this journey to found and sustain a nonprofit from scratch in order to truly make a positive impact on others.

Below are 10 lessons I’ve learned from my 10 years of founding a nonprofit. I am sharing these reflections in hopes this will inspire your impact on the community we are all a part of.