My name is Josh Tiao, and I am excited to launch this fundraiser for Big Homies Foundation. I have had the honor of working with Big Homies Foundation for almost four years now, and am very proud of the progress our organization has made leading up to this fundraiser. Pastor Vernon Andrews founded Big Homies Foundation over 25 years ago with the intent of helping at-risk youth avoid making the same mistakes he made early in his life. For decades, Big Homies Foundation has worked quietly, drawing deep satisfaction of helping a few kids at a time achieve their goals and build safe, productive, and healthy lives. However, these are tough times in inner-city neighborhoods such as Westmont, where we are located, and we are finding more youth needing mentorship and guidance than ever before. We believe our organization is well-positioned to meet some of our community’s needs through our innovative film curriculum and our mentorship programs. We have a short version, a long version, and well, an even longer version complete with data and references explaining why we believe this (if you want the researcher’s version, please email us, otherwise the short version and long version are below).

The Short Version:

Complementing our individual mentorship program, our film curriculum delivers a holistic curriculum to participating youth that offers several benefits to their futures, regardless of whether they pursue film for their careers. Our programming was very successful in 2025, as several of our students chose to enroll in community college with the intent of ultimately pursuing four-year bachelor degrees. We have built off last year’s success, and have launched a refined curriculum structured like a college-level course for 10 students in our Westmont community. While rooted in film, our curriculum is also designed to help our mentees develop other important life skills and habits, such as discipline, attention to detail, and teamwork. Our curriculum culminates in a capstone short film project written, directed, and produced by our students. This year, we have a network of eager industry professionals ready to help turn this project into a product worthy of entry into film festivals. Your contribution will help us deliver our curriculum. We pay our students a weekly stipend to help offset the opportunity cost of not being able to work part-time jobs, which some students and their families need given the rising costs of living. After accounting for the stipends, the remainder of our funds will be used for costs related to equipment, production, food, and salary support. We hope you believe in our work enough to contribute, and are deeply grateful for any amount you can provide. Now for the longer version, which will have more details into why we do what we do and how we see our curriculum factoring into our organization’s long-term sustainability strategy:

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The Long Version (remember, there’s also what I call the researcher’s version, if you want it):

As a true grassroots organization, Big Homies Foundation is deeply connected with our surrounding community. The youth that come through our organization are direct referrals – from Church congregation members, from the local park, from other nonprofit organizations in the area. Many of these youth face enormous obstacles, such as navigating the foster care system, parents struggling with substance use disorders and homelessness, neighborhoods with high rates of violence and many more. Traditionally, we pair these youth with Big Homies: mentors who have shared backgrounds and similar lived experiences that allow them to authentically connect with their mentees. An essential ingredient in these mentorship relationships is providing mentees opportunities to explore their extracurricular interests. In recent years, many of the youth that have come through Big Homies Foundation have expressed interest in film, content creation, and music. To meet this interest, Big Homies Foundation has developed a novel curriculum centered around film. Taught by a board member with years of professional experience in the film industry, this curriculum introduces mentees to foundational elements of film while fostering lifelong practices such as self-reflection, teamwork, and commitment. The curriculum culminates in a capstone short film written, directed, and produced by the mentees, allowing them to tell stories from their own perspectives and that are meaningful in their own lives. 2025 was one of our most successful years. Not only did we engage with a record number of youth in our organization’s history, but three of the youth that participated in our programming decided to enroll in community college, each with the intention of transferring and completing Bachelor’s degrees in four-year colleges after two years.

Inspired by the success of our mentees, this year, we have launched a refined curriculum resembling a college-level class for 10 high-school level students from our Westmont community and surrounding South Los Angeles communities. While building off successful elements from previous iterations of our curriculum, our refined curriculum focuses around a few key objectives.

- First, our curriculum will continue to center around a capstone short film written, directed, and produced by the students, but with an added element of professional oversight to create a product worthy of entry into local or national film festivals. We have met with industry professionals such as writers, directors, and producers who are eager to be involved, and we look forward to tapping into these connections to create a polished short film.

- Second, we are adding workshops that focus on mental well-being and trauma-informed care, given the challenging environments in which our mentees are growing up.

- Third, we intend to leverage connections of our board members to deliver professional seminars on key aspects of future success, such as financial literacy and physical health.

In accomplishing these objectives, we believe we will deliver a holistic education to our mentees that will provide multiple benefits for their futures. Most obviously, our mentees will develop technical skills that will prove useful should they want to pursue film, or film-adjacent careers. For those who choose paths outside of film, our curriculum still helps develop important habits and practices useful for any career. Furthermore, we believe there are also several, more intangible benefits from completing a rigorous curriculum like ours. We suspect the process itself of developing and completing a longitudinal project may be profoundly rewarding for our mentees, providing them confidence and a sense of accomplishment difficult to achieve in other settings within our communities. Giving our mentees opportunities to present their individual and collective experiences, thoughts, and stories may also be empowering and therapeutic. Should wider communities celebrate and embrace our short film and the story our mentees create, these effects may only be heightened. Lastly, we suspect that creating connections and relationships to mentors and communities outside of their immediate neighborhoods will broaden our mentees’ aspirations and visions for what they can achieve in their futures.

Reflecting the level of the curriculum we are delivering this year, we have created a budget that will help structure our programming. The key feature of our budget is a fund to pay our mentees a small weekly stipend for their participation. We believe this stipend is necessary for two major reasons.

- First, the stipend encourages our mentees to consider their participation in the course as a job. We intend to deliver our mentees the simulated experience of being a working professional even while they are learning, complete with a signed contract, clear expectations, and performance reviews.

- Second, our mentees are often under considerable financial stress; spending their time in our programming comes at the cost of finding part-time work that most of our mentees rely on to help support themselves and their families. Paying our mentees a weekly stipend alleviates some of this stress.

The rest of our budget is dedicated to a small salary for our film director, funds for group excursions, supplies, equipment, and a small fund for professional expertise we may need depending on the direction our students want to take their film. Of note, we consider our group excursions an important part of our curriculum. Many of our mentees have had very few opportunities to experience communities and environments outside of their neighborhoods; we have used these group excursions in the past to help our mentees broaden their horizons for what they can accomplish and where they can be in their futures.

Given the scope of our budget, we are seeking external funding for one of the first times in our organization’s history. Your contribution will help us fund our foremost priority: to provide our mentees an empowering and enriching education of the utmost quality. However, we believe your contribution will also contribute to our organization’s long-term sustainability and success. Here’s why:

- First, as our curriculum hinges on a short film worthy of film festival entry, we believe we can eventually market this short film, which can help cover some of the costs of future deliveries of the curriculum.

- Second, we believe a successful short film can significantly elevate our platform, allowing us to reach donors and funding sources to whom we currently have limited access. We believe the film will be a poignant way of showing these donors and funding sources who we are and the work we are doing, making us competitive for grant funding and investment.

- Third, we believe our project is ideal for academic partnership. Our refined curriculum already aligns well with research methods such as community-based partnered research and co-production. Furthermore, we already intend to conduct filmed interviews of our mentees at various stages of our curriculum, and these interviews may be excellent opportunities for qualitative research projects. Since many universities now recognize the value of community-based research projects, we believe our curriculum therefore holds major potential for accessing another funding stream through academic research institutions, and we fully intend to utilize connections our board members hold to form these partnerships.

Thus, for these reasons, we see funding of our curriculum not just as the delivery of a one-time program, but as an investment into our organization’s long-term sustainability. Thank you for taking the time to read about our organization’s work. Again, whatever you decide to contribute will be deeply appreciated. We are deeply grateful, and look forward to continued success and a great 2026.

Josh Tiao, and The Big Homies Foundation.