The Emerging 100 of Atlanta continues to provide mentorship and resources to empower the next generation. This weekend, “THE DREAM: A Vision for Atlanta’s Future” will raise funding to provide $4,000 scholarships to 50 students.
Hosted by Mayor Andre Dickens, the event supports Mayor’s Youth Scholarship Program.
Diriki T. Geuka, President of the Emerging 100 of Atlanta, recently spoke with ADW to discuss the impact of this year’s event.
How did The Emerging 100 of Atlanta come about?
The Emerging 100 is the young professional auxiliary of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. We have about 140 volunteer members who pay dues to go out and do good work in the community. The 100 Black men of Atlanta has a mission of enhancing the lives of local children, specifically those from disadvantaged backgrounds and we focus on an area of the city where the vast majority of the children come from households that are beneath the federal poverty line. And we’re all well aware of that statistic in Atlanta that if you’re a child born in poverty, you have about a 4% chance of making it out. And for a city with this much wealth, this many large corporations, this many institutions of higher learning, that’s just an issue. And in our 14 year history, we’ve given away over a half a million dollars in direct scholarship to about 57 students. That are either graduating from school or have graduated or in school right now. And we spent multiples of that on programming for thousands of children over a decade history.
How did you get involved with the Emerging 100?
I moved to Atlanta to work for the federal government in 2017, I’m an attorney by trade. So I didn’t know too much about the social scene here. And the professionals I met recommended that I look into the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. As fate would have it, a friend that I went to FAMU with also shared with me that they were doing some social fundraising and made the introduction with other like-minded brothers. And so I began to support and help the organization. A couple of years later, I became president.
What can attendees expect from “THE DREAM: A Vision for Atlanta’s Future”?
Atlanta is a group project. I think Jay Bailey is the person I heard popularized that term over at RICE. So we’ve made it our mission to be more collaborative to reach out to other organizations. And we’re so lucky to live in a city like Atlanta, where our mayor and other elected leaders and civil servants care a lot about children and want to do some volunteering. We have a lofty goal. And that money will be repurposed and put back into the community to help out local children and I think it’s going to be very fun.
