2 Dads, 1 Mission - Help Kevin & Arvy
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Disappointment. Pain. Uncertainty. Insecurity. Frustration. Sadness. Confusion. Abandonment. Separation. Disconnection. Loneliness. Anger. Exhaustion. Regret.
19.7 million American children are likely to experience these emotions and existential dilemmas growing up in households without fathers present in them. Read that again: 19,700,000 children grow up in the United States of America without their fathers in their households. It’s an American epidemic, and the trauma of fatherless children is wide on the spectrum. Those emotions aforementioned were experienced directly by fathers who today are the founders of CoolxDad .
19.7 million American children are likely to experience these emotions and existential dilemmas growing up in households without fathers present in them. Read that again: 19,700,000 children grow up in the United States of America without their fathers in their households. It’s an American epidemic, and the trauma of fatherless children is wide on the spectrum. Those emotions aforementioned were experienced directly by fathers who today are the founders of CoolxDad .
CoolxDad co-founders/executive directors Kevin Barnett , a native of Brooklyn, New York, and Arvy Lim , originally from the Philippines, are as if brothers today, but started their lives in vastly different settings, as they came to learn the hard lessons of fatherhood demonstrated early. Having first met each other while competing for the same job years ago, Barnett and Lim quickly became friendly colleagues, then best friends, and now business partners after bonding over their rites of passage into fatherhood and their subsequent responsibilities as parents as well as husbands.
“Growing up, I missed having the chance to learn from my father,” explained Barnett, a former entertainment-industry entrepreneur. “My father was in and out of my life. I remember sitting home, waiting on him to come pick me up after speaking with him hours before. Sitting down on my steps waiting on my pops all day to pick me up from my mom’s house on the weekend. He never showed. I remember the emotions I had within myself, I was frustrated, sad, and confused.”
For Lim, his experience was more a matter of intimacy with the people responsible for moving him from his village of extended family in southeast Asia to the starkly different world of southeast Texas.
“My parents migrated to the USA without me and my brother in 1985,” Lim, a self-described “black sheep of the family”, intimated. “I was 8-years old when I finally met my parents for the first time in person, and I didn’t connect with my parents immediately. I knew they were my parents and I’m supposed to love them, but the connection was lacking early on. Building that relationship was a natural progress and it needed time to blossom. My parents worked extremely hard to make ends meet. My mom hustled three jobs at the same time and my dad hustled two jobs. I have an abundance of respect and gratitude for my parents’ sacrifice and foresight.
“CoolxDad was meant for me and Kevin to build this,” explained Lim. “That’s why it’s special. Our relationship is not by accident. Our story of downfalls and lessons has connected us to the mission of CoolxDad. I’ve always wanted to serve my community, specifically inner-city kids -- this is just another vehicle to make an impact.”
So, what is CoolxDad exactly ? CoolxDad is a nonprofit organization centered in uniting father figures of all backgrounds with their children through exposure to financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and mental health programming to underserved and historically excluded communities.
Alas, CoolxDad has begun to gain traction, starting in our native Houston, Texas, from where our aforementioned father-founders hail. Our partners -- the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Uncle Nearest, and Courvoisier -- are the first to come aboard to jumpstart our programming initiatives and special projects to bring awareness to our family audience, but we still need a lot of help.
In order to grow our reach to households outside of Texas and into the households spanning the coasts and many borders of America, we are hoping -- and humbly asking -- for our supporters to contribute to our bootstrapping our organization to fully fund our staff, so we can:
1.) Create organizational capacity, which will allow CoolxDad to build and maintain reliable staff structures, enabling the organization to plan, promote, and put-out intellectual and physical product (more on this later) to spread brand awareness
2.) Facilitate brand programming , in which CoolxDad can centrally engage communities in the City of Houston and other cities within the state of Texas through sponsored in person and socially distant events for families to engage each other, other families, and communities at-large
3.) Produce brand merchandise , to advertise the organization’s mission to attract father figures to directly interface their children in family activities and encourage others to engage the CoolxDad mission for their families
4.) Publish an online magazine, which will directly relate audiences to original digital content, created chiefly by CoolxDad staff and contributing partners, to encourage and inspire father figures to continue to develop relationships with their children and families
With your collective monetary help, you can become a valued part of our mission and our history. In the ongoing saga of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic fallout associated with it, we know that not everyone can contribute in large amounts. However, in reaching our goal from your investments as angels to our cause, we are ready to bring our above objectives to life and begin immediately helping families through our core mission. For those who cannot spare any, even your willingness and generosity in sharing our GoFundMe story via social media and any other means may allow others to become aware of our cause and contribute, which would mean that you have still contributed to our fund.
We thank you, and we love you in advance.
#BEACOOLDAD
“Growing up, I missed having the chance to learn from my father,” explained Barnett, a former entertainment-industry entrepreneur. “My father was in and out of my life. I remember sitting home, waiting on him to come pick me up after speaking with him hours before. Sitting down on my steps waiting on my pops all day to pick me up from my mom’s house on the weekend. He never showed. I remember the emotions I had within myself, I was frustrated, sad, and confused.”
For Lim, his experience was more a matter of intimacy with the people responsible for moving him from his village of extended family in southeast Asia to the starkly different world of southeast Texas.
“My parents migrated to the USA without me and my brother in 1985,” Lim, a self-described “black sheep of the family”, intimated. “I was 8-years old when I finally met my parents for the first time in person, and I didn’t connect with my parents immediately. I knew they were my parents and I’m supposed to love them, but the connection was lacking early on. Building that relationship was a natural progress and it needed time to blossom. My parents worked extremely hard to make ends meet. My mom hustled three jobs at the same time and my dad hustled two jobs. I have an abundance of respect and gratitude for my parents’ sacrifice and foresight.
“CoolxDad was meant for me and Kevin to build this,” explained Lim. “That’s why it’s special. Our relationship is not by accident. Our story of downfalls and lessons has connected us to the mission of CoolxDad. I’ve always wanted to serve my community, specifically inner-city kids -- this is just another vehicle to make an impact.”
So, what is CoolxDad exactly ? CoolxDad is a nonprofit organization centered in uniting father figures of all backgrounds with their children through exposure to financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and mental health programming to underserved and historically excluded communities.
Alas, CoolxDad has begun to gain traction, starting in our native Houston, Texas, from where our aforementioned father-founders hail. Our partners -- the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Uncle Nearest, and Courvoisier -- are the first to come aboard to jumpstart our programming initiatives and special projects to bring awareness to our family audience, but we still need a lot of help.
In order to grow our reach to households outside of Texas and into the households spanning the coasts and many borders of America, we are hoping -- and humbly asking -- for our supporters to contribute to our bootstrapping our organization to fully fund our staff, so we can:
1.) Create organizational capacity, which will allow CoolxDad to build and maintain reliable staff structures, enabling the organization to plan, promote, and put-out intellectual and physical product (more on this later) to spread brand awareness
2.) Facilitate brand programming , in which CoolxDad can centrally engage communities in the City of Houston and other cities within the state of Texas through sponsored in person and socially distant events for families to engage each other, other families, and communities at-large
3.) Produce brand merchandise , to advertise the organization’s mission to attract father figures to directly interface their children in family activities and encourage others to engage the CoolxDad mission for their families
4.) Publish an online magazine, which will directly relate audiences to original digital content, created chiefly by CoolxDad staff and contributing partners, to encourage and inspire father figures to continue to develop relationships with their children and families
With your collective monetary help, you can become a valued part of our mission and our history. In the ongoing saga of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic fallout associated with it, we know that not everyone can contribute in large amounts. However, in reaching our goal from your investments as angels to our cause, we are ready to bring our above objectives to life and begin immediately helping families through our core mission. For those who cannot spare any, even your willingness and generosity in sharing our GoFundMe story via social media and any other means may allow others to become aware of our cause and contribute, which would mean that you have still contributed to our fund.
We thank you, and we love you in advance.
#BEACOOLDAD
Organizer
Arvy Lim
Organizer
Houston, TX
