Black History Month: Celebrating 10 Years of Partnership with The Fellowship Initiative
2025 marks the tenth year of Vibrant Emotional Health’s partnership with The Fellowship Initiative (TFI).
February is Black History Month, a celebration of the innovation, brilliance, and creativity of the Black community. While reserved for February, Black history is made every day, year-round. This month, Vibrant celebrates our own Black History with the ten-year anniversary of our partnership with TFI.
The Fellowship Initiative, founded and funded by J.P. Morgan Chase in 2010 and in partnership with Vibrant Emotional Health since 2015, provides young Black and Brown masculine people access to opportunities through mentorship, skill and leadership development, and social and emotional care.
It has provided comprehensive and hands-on academic, social, and emotional support to more than 1,000 Fellows who dedicate themselves to the program from tenth grade through their first year post-high school.
Former J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation president Kimberly Davis opened TFI’s flagship site in New York City in 2010. Since then, it has expanded to seven major cities nationwide: Oakland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, New York, and Washington, D.C.
At launch, TFI leaders envisioned a path to get young men of color ready for college through mentorship and tutoring. When all 40 Fellows in the first NYC cohort graduated, its leaders recognized a missing component: longer-term emotional well-being.
“Once in college, the Fellows continued to struggle with their mental health, trauma, racism, and adapting to academic and social challenges in their new environment,” said Damon Watson, TFI program director. “That’s where Vibrant came in . . . To address the social, emotional, and wellness needs of the Fellows and their caregivers.”
The program has maintained a 100% high school graduation rate and 100% college admission rate among graduating Fellows, more than half of whom are the first in their family to attend college.
“My team creates a space where the Fellows feel safe and comfortable being vulnerable. These brave and affirming spaces foster an environment where their light and energy can shine,” Watson added.
Our goal is to create spaces where there are no preconceived notions, where they can just show up exactly how they are,” he added.
Each site employs one or more clinical youth leaders to provide enhanced, clinically-informed support, including care management services, crisis intervention, and social-emotional wellness workshops for Fellows, parents, caregivers, and staff. Each clinical youth leader serves 40 to 80 Fellows in their city, and most are master-level clinicians licensed in their respective fields.
These relationships lay the foundation for planning, programming, and support, connecting Fellows and families to long-term resources, providing community wellness workshops, and meaningful crisis intervention.
“We know that the Fellows’ struggles aren’t isolated,” said Watson. “It’s a broader picture. Families are moving through trauma and harm on a regular basis. It’s important for us to acknowledge that harm and trauma, provide support, and connect the Fellows and their families to resources to help them move through what they’ve experienced.”
TFI partners with community-based organizations that have adopted the TFI framework of college attainment mentorship in each of its seven cities. In 2023, Vibrant assisted The Fellowship Initiative in further expanding its operation in Washington, D.C. It joined forces with the Youth Guidance-hosted program Becoming a Man (BAM), a school-based counseling program for young men of color in grades seven through 12. Together, they are known as BAMFI (Becoming a Man Fellowship Initiative). The BAMFI partnership allows TFI to provide in-school emotional, academic, and wellness support to young men of color as they transition to becoming Fellows in tenth grade. This in-school support fulfills a crucial missing element previously unavailable in TFI’s traditional Saturday support programming. This added support is not Vibrant’s only recent enhancement to TFI’s Washington, D.C. site. “In 2024, we started hiring for our new [D.C.] cohort whose framework is a little different than the rest of the cohorts,” said Watson.
“We are serving more Fellows in D.C. than anywhere else. We will start serving 150 Fellows this year. That number will increase yearly as we accept new Fellows who were part of the Becoming a Man program.”
Watson is confident that the partnership with BAM will serve as a blueprint for expanding and enhancing the program at current and future sites.
“While Vibrant represents the clinical aspect of TFI in care management and emotional support, J.P. Morgan Chase owns the rest of the TFI framework from mentorship to tutoring. I believe this pilot program will show that we can do even more, expand to more places, and continue to create more brave and affirming spaces for young men of color everywhere.”
Comments are closed here.