Family Biz Builder (FBB), established in 2014 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit youth training and development organization, serves low-income, at-risk children, ages 5-17. Family Biz Builder’s mission is to provide character, life skills, and educational training programs to children and families. The organization’s vision is to develop a growth mindset—understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed, with practice.   

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The issues/challenges that we address are low literacy, low reading grade levels and behavior issues of the youth in Tunica, Coahoma and Desoto Counties in Mississippi.   

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The youth development programs include: 

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Literacy & Education Program 

Provides in-home remote one-on-one mentoring and tutoring sessions with participants while offering character, life skills, and online educational software support.   

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Sports & Fitness National Junior Tennis Learning (NJTL) 

Was designed to connect character, life skills, and education with the game of tennis. 

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Remote Internship Program 

Improves the character, life, and work readiness skills of youth and young adults while working in various roles remotely in the Family Biz Builder Programs. Interns are trained online to perform administrative duties, mentoring, and tutoring services. The job readiness skills are essential to closing the skills gap and to improve work ethic in the future workforce. 

 

Why Youth Development? 

Youth development is an intentional process that prepares a young person to meet the challenges of adolescence into adulthood and to achieve his or her full potential. Youth development is promoted through activities and experiences that help youth develop social, ethical, emotional, physical, and cognitive competencies.

 

We often think illiteracy is not being able to read or write, but what does that mean on a deeper level? It’s a much bigger and more complex issue than one might think and it’s important to understand the devastating impacts of illiteracy. Social and economic development is hindered. 

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Breaking the cycle of poverty does not happen overnight, but small steps towards change can be achieved through raising awareness and actively discussing the issue. It may not affect us personally, but consciously choosing to avoid a problem and hoping it will magically go away does not offer a solution either. 

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Everyone must work together to defeat low literacy and its impact. Without the participation of parents, schools, community organizations, businesses, and government, the situation will never be turned around.