Hello. I am Angela Tiana Hellmers-Holmes, and I am in the process of starting a nonprofit, The Tiana Project, a coffee shop employing homeless and reformed convicts. I’d like to share more information and encourage you to support this effort. These donations will go towards the startup costs. Before I get into the details of the nonprofit, I will tell you a little about who I am. I am currently in my third year of undergrad at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. I will be getting two bachelor’s degrees, one in psychology and the other in sociology. After my bachelor's, I plan to further my education in both areas as well as go to medical school. While attending SMU, I have continued to work full-time on top of my full-time school schedule. I have had the privilege of working in the recruiting department of the SMU football team, as well as being a student manager for the women’s basketball team, so I guess you could say sports is one of my many hobbies. Switching gears from my life now, my childhood was quite chaotic. I come from a broken family where my parents come from two completely different upbringings. My mother was adopted by a well-off middle-class family in rural Nebraska, and my father is from a one-parent military household. In addition to my mother and father, I have a stepmom from a lower-middle-class family in Detroit, Michigan. With this kind of diversity in upbringings, I saw a broad spectrum of normality for each parent. I became increasingly curious about these differences and the people they grew up to be as I got older, and how they shaped who I am today.

In high school, I realized that people tend to end up in different places later on in life based on the access to resources they have growing up. I also realized that was not fair. This developed into a passion for wanting to help underprivileged people. The idea of this nonprofit first popped into my head during my sophomore year in high school, and it is finally time to make something of this idea in my head. I have expansive plans for this nonprofit, but will be starting small due to my lack of knowledge in the business world. To start, I plan to open a coffee shop employing the homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals. There are many nonprofits that help these two groups of people find jobs. To differ from other nonprofits, my thought is to give them a job instead of helping them find a job elsewhere. Now, I know a coffee shop realistically will not have many people employed, but to start, the profit brought in by the coffee shop and donations received will help to give resources to the current employees as well as help the nonprofit expand. Something that I have learned over the years is that employing vulnerable groups of people takes more than just a job. They will also need access to rehab, therapy, and medical benefits at the very least. Once people have reached a level of stability in which they are happy and successful in, more resources will be offered, like tuition reimbursement. The goal of this starting branch of the nonprofit is to get people off the streets and lower the return rate to jails and prisons.

I chose a coffee shop because I love coffee, so why not combine something I’m passionate about and love. I think it is also a good way to introduce people back into the greater society without too close of proximity. It will be easier for a “regular” society member to be comfortable with a member of a community with a bad reputation to make their coffee rather than work beside them. It will also be less intimidating and hopefully less overwhelming for someone of such a vulnerable population to make a coffee than take on a major, “more important” job. I believe this will be a good transition for them back into a functioning society, as well as for me into the business world. The end goal of this is to clean up our urban areas and minimize the wealth and education gap between social classes, creating a better, more functioning society as a whole.

Vague plans for the expansion of The Tiana project include expanding to other cities, a children’s center, and providing housing.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about and consider supporting my nonprofit. This mission is something I am highly passionate about, and I truly believe in the impact we can make together. We are currently working to raise over $3,000 to cover startup and filing costs, and every single donation, no matter the amount, brings us one step closer to making this dream a reality.

No gift is too small, and no act of generosity goes unnoticed. Your support means the world, and any donation can be given directly to me, Angela Tiana, the founder. If you are interested in following along and seeing what your donation has helped build, there will be a website and social media accounts coming soon! Thank you.