Hey y'all, welcome back to Becoming the People.

I'm Prentice Hemphill, and we have another special episode for you today.

I am in conversation with Aisha Yandoro, who I was really excited to talk with on this episode.

I've been in this place, sometimes lost in my own

cynicism or feeling the impossibility of the moment, feeling overwhelmed by the conditions

and not knowing where to start. And I don't think I'm alone in that place. There's a lot of people

that around me that I think are feeling that similarly. And I wanted to talk to Aisha

because to me, she is one of these people that is risking, daring to actually address an issue,

address an issue in our community and take on a radical shift in order to see what comes from it.

And I really wanted to be inspired by her work.

I wanted to learn more about her work, how she does it, why she does it. So Aisha Yandoro is the CEO

of Springboard Opportunities. She's also the person that kind of created this project called

Magnolia Mothers Trust, which is a

guaranteed income program specifically, specifically for black mothers who are living in poverty.

She gives folks $1,000 a month. There's no strings attached. They can do whatever they need to

with the money. And it, to me, it represents the best of us because it's asking this question, I think,

of what happens when we don't have to live in scarcity?

What happens when we're not struggling as much to make ends meet?

What becomes possible in that space?

And I wanted to talk to Aisha about everything underneath it, you know, our concepts of

deservedness, like who's worthy of actually getting help and how do they have to prove their

worthiness to us inside of this system that we're all in. We also talked about from our own lives

...