Back to where it started
Da'Kwon has spent a lot of time at 3017 4th Ave S. At first it was as a student, exploring a career in the trades at Urban Ventures' Lake Street Works program. Now, it's to support the students who've come after him. He shares about his unexpected path, challenges along the way, and how since graduating from the program he's launched into a successful career.
He tells them about the knee injuries that ended his basketball plans. About the Christmas Day his family became homeless. About the year he spent sleeping on the floor of his granny's apartment while his mom slept on an air mattress next to him. He tells them how an uncle mentioned a construction program that would pay him and feed him, and how that program, Lake Street Works, ended up being the thing that held everything else together.
Today Da'Kwon is a Dunwoody graduate and an estimator at Mortenson. He has a career, a home, and a degree. In his own words: "It's unreal how I went from being homeless with no plan for my future to where I am now."
That journey is what makes this building so important. Because it becomes the launch pad for students who are working hard to build a better future.
Why the building matters
Lake Street Works meets every week at 3017, a workshop and training center where students learn trade skills alongside the kind of steady, practical support Da'Kwon didn't have anywhere else at the time: help opening his first bank account, guidance on essays, a mentor who saw project management in him before he saw it in himself.
Right now, we lease that space. We have the unexpected opportunity to buy it outright, securing it permanently instead of depending on a landlord's decisions about the future of the block. Ownership also means the space can grow and adapt as the program does, rather than staying fixed to whatever the lease allows.
Over 100 students are working through their own Launch Plans at Urban Ventures today. Da'Kwon was one of them once. The question now is whether the next Da'Kwon will have the same room to walk into.
What it takes
We have six weeks to raise the $1.5 million to complete the purchase. It's a capital campaign, which means it isn't about funding a program for a year. It's about making sure the room where the program happens can't be taken away.
A gift to Keep Them Launching secures:
The building, permanently. 3017 becomes ours, not subject to a lease or the future of the block.
Space to grow. The building can adapt as the program grows, instead of staying capped by the lease.
More effeciency. We save over $100,000 per year on rental costs.
Da'Kwon's story is one version of what that room makes possible. There are others in progress right now, mid-story, at 3017 this week.
See what your gift secures at 3017. Help us Keep Them Launching.
