We Unlock Success for The Least Likely: We inspire, enable, and propel underestimated diverse talent towards personal excellence in their powerful digital career paths by building lighthouses to industry mentors who will help them change the world for the better.
Overview: The Roots & Reach
The DAKAR Foundation is a high tech, high touch arts and media community technology partner creating programs in digital content production, design, audience engagement, and socio-economic uplift. We focus on talented, yet at-risk youth in danger of dropping out due to a lack of exposure to mentors and early career access points.
Dakar works with a coalition of partners and underestimated talent to instil a renewed passion for academic and vocational studies while gaining new media skills and experience to qualify for entry-level entertainment industry jobs at the world’s best companies and institutions. We forge broad efforts in Diverse Supplier Preparation Programs, Mentoring, Urban Marketing, Advertising, Event Planning, Content Delivery and Business Development Solutions across public and private sector partnerships.
What We Do:
Over the last 30+ years, Kevin Clark and his team have worked with Mobile World Congress, iHeart Radio, AT&T, The California Community College Administration, Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, and a host of others on programs that have given numerous young professionals a better future.
1. We collaborate with industry partners to establish pathway programs that provide exposure and mentorships across technology infused growth industries.
2. We recruit talented students and overlooked experienced professionals to prepare the next wave of career opportunities sponsored by great companies and institutions.
3. We create attuned promotional live streaming, recap, and modular content that both welcomes new audience members as well as provides validation for our partners’ ROI on growth.
How We Do It Today:
The Pandemic changed everything. We are taking part in a socio-economic revolution that is certain to open new opportunities for all of us to rise in new ways. The Dakar Foundation team is positioning itself, its talent ecosystem, and its partners towards these new reality factors by:
1. We are engaging a coalition of Media, Educational, Infrastructural, Governmental and Philanthropic partners to sponsor quarterly activated programs focused on Minority Entrepreneurship & Supplier Pathways to eradicate the blockage of under-resourced groups taking part in the various programs availed them.
2. We are establishing a career curriculum and mentorship program with micro-mentoring frameworks as well as year-long in-depth career support frameworks that ensure talent success occurs. We have assembled a powerful roster of industry professionals who will present powerful principles to the students and transitional professionals to yield tangible portfolio work product to then engage our partner designated mentors as their introduction to growing into becoming vetted vendors and suppliers.
3. We are establishing event streaming offerings that will augment our partners’ (Mobile World Congress, Digraph, National Association of Broadcasters, etc.) virtualized event offerings as well as in-person when C19 complexities have abated.
How We Can Work Together:
We, like you, are coping with extreme complexity. We know you are under pressure budgetarily as well optically to deliver results that matter. We also know that you need to have mission critical capable partners that are experienced and that you trust will be truly collaborative in helping you succeed.
To meet this mission of helping our partners shine while doing the phenomenal, we work in the following stages:
1. Deep Discovery – interview you to find out what your challenges and mandates are so we can come back to you with true value that works for your organization.
2. Strategic Design – we work with you and your team to war-game the intended effect and the realities of the market/talent ecosystem opportunities so we can build a clear pathway to success that makes sense to stakeholders who sign checks.
3. Delivery – We assemble our teams of superheroes dedicated to your mission outcomes and they perform at the highest levels while we document every aspect to show everyone on your team what you’ve invested in.
4. Promote – We tell the story of the story as it’s being made as well as once it’s done with streaming, social, and broadcast quality assets you and your organization can proudly leverage for many months afterwards.
5. Grow – We are focused on partnerships that are long-term and evolutionary. We will learn from you what could be elevated and our next program will do just that to achieve even more success.
The stark realities of this nation’s awakening to the abysmal absence of black success within the technical and production arenas across the vast broadcast media industry spectrum presents our corporate partners with the opportunity to chart a bold new inclusive mandate and vision with Dakar Foundation’s help. We propose that a sponsored program with an annual allocation of $ _______ is established for a nationwide program that will serve the nations talent pipeline with young emerging apprentices as well as displaced experienced black talent that to date has been extremely hard to find and attract.
The program will combine Dakar’s 2021×3 approach:
1. A Broadcast & Social Media Supplier & Entrepreneurship curriculum identifying 20 local candidates who will go through a Dakar screening and pathway curriculum of real-world training relevant for delivering high-market value work product that they can then be contracted for by the affiliate after a semester ends. This program will source experienced talent that has been displaced during C19 cutbacks.
2. A Career pathway mentorship program where Sinclair Media executives and leaders across functions will step forward to mentor 1:1 from a group of 20 Dakar Foundation selected mentees on their career opportunity within the broadcast industry. This will involve both online as well as in-depth mutual growth over the course of 6 months that end with the mentor helping the mentee find tangible work opportunities if they have performed to their satisfaction.
3. A video and audio series of documentation and event collaborations throughout the year that Dakar’s team will produce and deliver for clients and its affiliates to leverage.
Proposed Program Accelerator Incubator:
The stark realities of this nation’s awakening to the abysmal absence of black success within the energy and clean-technology arena presents JP Morgan Chase with the opportunity to chart a bold new inclusive course and vision with Dakar Foundation’s help. We propose that a sponsored program with an annual allocation of $1_______ is established for a county-wide program that will serve the nations talent pipeline with young emerging apprentices as well as displaced experienced black talent that to date has been extremely hard to find and attract.
Proposed Program (Department of Defense Sponsored Utilizing African American Military Timeline
The complexities of 2021 awakenings along with an intensifying disconnect in DOD success in values driven engagement success with Generation Z & Alpha presents an opportunity to chart a bold, new, creative communications campaign and vision with Dakar Foundation’s help.
We propose that a sponsored program with an annual allocation of $____is established for a digital media and mentorship program that will serve the DOD’s mandate to communicate its authentic values with young emerging citizens in ways that matter to them, as well as empower veterans to amplify their hard-earned wisdom to help mentor the next generation as they also ascend to higher heights.
Our Team:
Kevin Clark
Louis Libin
Kecia Washington
General Arnold Bray
Jennifer Goldfinch
Anna Marie Piersimoni
Jay Tucker
Veretta Yancey
La Mer Walker
Ted Milner
Contact Us:
Kevinclark@DakarFoundation.org