Up From Slavery Initiative

Our mission is to heal, inform, and empower our marginalized and underserved communities through racial justice, financial literacy, and wellness. Through this process we are making our brothers and sisters problems our problems, while solving them together.

Our vision is to build sustainable wealth and self-empowerment among the black and brown community. This initiative will create a pathway to freedom: ​

Financial Freedom- Debt Management, Business, Property & Investments.

Freedom from racial oppression and thoughts of inadequacy.

Freedom from unhealthy mental and physical habits.

Our Goals

• Provide knowledge to address racial justice & injustice among the brown and black communities. Bringing awareness to systematic racism, racial profiling, stereotypes, and biases.
• Promote effective and relevant health, mental health, and wellness strategies for people of color. Bring awareness to individuals' personal health and educate the community regarding cultural influence and appropriate interactions.
• Financial literacy will empower individuals to take control of their personal and business finances by learning and understanding their history and the importance of proper money management. Education will include budgeting, savings/investments, owning property, entrepreneurship, credit, and other vital components to gain financial freedom and create "generational wealth".
  

The Naming of UFSI

Inspired by the book "Up From Slavery" written by Booker T. Washington, I began to gauge how Black people went from being newly "emancipated", to building wealth on Black Wallstreet in Tulsa Oklahoma within 50 years. This empowered me to reach out to a few like minded individuals, and we developed the Up From Slavery Initiative to create pathways of freedom in an effort to do the same. - Board President, Darryl Riley