Ep: 219 - Special ep! The Boys Club DAO donates $200K to the Lower Eastside Girls Club, feat. guests Jenny Dembrow (Executive Director) and Aicha Cherif (Alum)

[00:29] Here's this week's show. [00:31] you [00:33] Welcome to Boys Club Live. This is a special Thanksgiving episode, a thankful episode, if you will. We are going to talk about a few things. We're going to have some special guests on. Dina, do you want to tell us what we're doing here today? Sure. Yeah. We're going to have our friends from the Lower East Side come on. Before we talk about that, a few housekeeping items. I want to talk about a couple of events we have coming up. A quick shout out to Polygon. We just spent... [00:59] week with the team. A wonderful week. A wonderful week. We did a full news desk style coverage of their event in Buenos Aires last week for DevConnect. And it was so fun, so great, incredible speakers. I got to meet Sandeep. [01:14] for the first time. So that was amazing. We had a great chat with him. We're going to be posting some clips and stuff on our speed so you can listen back to that. Yeah. Thanks to, thankful for Polygon for sponsoring this live stream. If you've touched crypto in any way, chances are, you've already used Polygon. It's a chain quietly covering a bunch of stuff that actually works, that people actually use, like Stripes Crypto Payments, betting on PolyMarkets, prediction markets, and a bunch more. So thank you to them. And then a couple other bits and bobs, [01:44] a creator dinner with our friends at base in Miami next week. Next week. Next week. And so if you're going to be in Miami for Basel, Basel, [01:57] Art Basel? [01:58] Come on down. Slide into the DMs. We'll send you some details. And then really excited to be also doing some fun stuff with Stellar for the Stellar house. Stellar is doing a big day of programming on the 4th of December, which is the Thursday. Speakers, panels, a bunch of really smart people in the room talking about finance and culture and crypto. And so you should definitely RSVP to that if you're going to be in town. And then we are going to be doing a brunch as well.

[02:28] into the-- [02:30] chat here. [02:32] So, [02:32] Any other housekeeping items? We're also going to be at Breakpoint. If you guys are going to be at Breakpoint, hit us up. We'll be live streaming from the conference there, which will be really fun. Blake and I. [02:47] taken [02:48] taking the stream yard to Abu Dhabi again. What? You got to get a little case for your mics. Yeah, I know mine's rolling around in my suitcase and getting kind of beat up. Um, so yeah, that'll be really fun. Um, [03:05] going to be talking to lots of great founders and thinkers and people in the salon ecosystem so if that is you um sliding to the dms we'd love to schedule some on camera time with you uh while we [03:20] Abhidami. [03:21] So that I just realized, can you pull up the tweet that we just put out our big news? I can. Because I have now I'm in like a browser. [03:34] browser jail. So I can't switch between browsers. I'm not logged in on this. [03:40] Anyway, it's... [03:43] No problem. Okay. So we're going to have Jenny Dembro, who's the executive director of the Lower East Side Girls Club and Aisha Sharif, who is an alum of the Lower East Side Girls Club. Join us in about [03:54] three minutes. But before they join, we're so excited to share our news today that we made a big donation to the Lower Side Girls Club a few weeks ago. The donation was made in ETH.

[04:08] It was $200,000 at the time. Slid a bit from there, but it was... Let's hope they made some trades. Totally. I hope they did. They made some swaps. [04:21] And it... [04:23] is so exciting, feels so good. Basically, the Boys Club DAO is a big community of people who work together on lots of different projects, but one in particular, which raised the funds, which was [04:37] the Zaddy sale in 2022. [04:40] We sold this NFT. We also did some other fun stuff with the NFTs at the time. And the approach very much was like, [04:47] Let's just experiment and see what we can do together. And like none of us had done... [04:52] anything like this before and we're kind of just like let's all figure it out and like [04:57] figure out how to do this. And so there's so many wonderful people that I could [05:01] namedropped here helped out with this project. [05:05] And maybe we'll do a separate thread on that, but it was just a really fun, uh, [05:11] really fun thing that we did together as a DAO and the funds have been sitting in the treasury and we've had a lot of conversations about like what [05:18] how those funds should be used and basically landed on this donation to the girls club we had done [05:25] worked with Girls Club in the past. We've done a few other donations. One that was around our Friendsgiving that we did in 2023, I think. And then at the Net Gala last year. But yeah,

[05:39] Both years. Oh, both years. Yeah. For the Nicaragua. And just love the organization and felt like it was the [05:46] thing that felt most true to the spirit of the community and what brought the people together around the work in the first place, in terms of like giving back to [05:55] girls and young people in New York City with this [05:59] programming that they do and all the wonderful work that they do. So that's kind of, that's our big news. Anything to add? [06:06] I just... A few things. One, I think a big sort of mission around Boys Club was... [06:16] We talked about bringing new voices to the new internet, and [06:20] giving [06:21] like [06:22] an accessibility to this technology and also like [06:25] Wealth creation, but also opportunity. Like there's all this stuff that's happening within crypto and innovation and like sort of like what people were calling at the time the new Internet. And we wanted to increase the surface area for who got exposure to that and who had upside and opportunity from that. And so this feels like a really natural extension of that. [06:51] as they do like so such great incredible work to give opportunity to so many different types of people here in in New York City and [07:02] Boys Club really was birthed out of New York, and New York is very much the home of Boys Club. And so...

[07:09] giving back to this community felt so good. Honestly, like when those signing those notice a safe transactions was definitely like top of my list in terms of the work that I've done at Boys Club and feel really, really grateful to have. [07:25] had this money land there. So yeah, just, just grateful and happy and nothing feels as good as giving money away. I got to tell you. I totally, totally. Um, let's see if any is available to come up on stage here. [07:43] Jenny. Hello. [07:46] Good. How are you? Good. Can you hear me okay? [07:49] Audio visuals all good. Perfect. [07:52] So nice to see you, to meet you. Nice to see you and meet you. I think we might need to, I think your audio might need to be changed to your cord. So the way that you can do that is go down to, do you see the little mic setting? [08:08] Is it easier if I just... [08:11] Thank you. [08:13] You're muted now, so... [08:15] Thank you. [08:16] Is that better? [08:18] That's better. We can do that. Yeah. Yeah. I can hear you better at least. I get a little nervous with technology, but I'll do my best. And I'm no problem. [08:26] Aisha is about to join as well, I think. Great. [08:29] Great, great. Okay, so Jenny Dembrough, executive director of the Lower East Side Girls Club. Welcome to the show. [08:36] So yeah, honored and grateful to be able to do some work with you guys. Would love to hear from you just some of the work that you do, the mission of the Lower Side Girls Club, like set the stage for us. Yeah, absolutely. But first, I do want to say I did hear you say that nothing feels better than giving money away.

[08:56] And we agree. So it's the spirit of giving. It's the season of giving. Yeah. And I just do want to honor the, [09:06] extraordinary donation that you provided to us, especially under a time when nonprofit work is the nonprofit sector is under attack. [09:17] You have no idea what it means to us as an organization and to our community, this gift that will allow us to continue to provide the vital programming and resources that we provide to the community each and every day. And I'll tell you, you know, I love that we're doing a Boys Club Girls Club mashup. You've been supporting us and championing us in every way. And this is just like the culmination of that. [09:47] to our extraordinary Alliance Junior Board member, Maria Pesce, that she brought us all together. She is the glue that, you know, she's the introductory connector person. That sounded weird. You know, she brought us together and mission and vision aligned. And so I'm just sending all the flowers and love to Maria. Yeah. I mean, I, the Lower East Side Girls Club was [10:17] boys clubs in our neighborhood and no girls clubs. So a group of women got together in Reese NYCHA housing right across where the girls club is today and said, no one else is going to do it. We're going to do it ourselves. I joined a few months after that initial meeting. So I've seen the organization through every incarnation, every space we've been in, which included two dozen locations all around the neighborhood, a basement every time it would rain, it would flood. At one

[10:47] we were all over and we'd be pushing our little shopping cart of art supplies around saying, someday we're going to build a building. And everyone was like, wow, those women at the girls club are crazy. But, you know, here we are today in a 40,000 square foot facility. You know, we not only have the girls club, which provides free after school, in school and summer programming to girls and gender expansive youth in everything from STEM, the arts, digital media, [11:17] mentoring. I mean, we, [11:19] We do so much. It's really awe-inspiring and it's because of the extraordinary staff and our volunteers and mentors at the Girls Club. And so you definitely have to come see us. We even have a planetarium. We can fly you through the cosmos. We've got young astronomers flying through the Milky Way. But that being said... [11:41] I think, you know, the mission of the Girls Club is to provide opportunity to give space to, you know, to young people that can kind of just see all the possibilities. We say joy, power, and possibility. And, you know, so that they, I'm just going to see if Aisha, oh, she's there somewhere. Oh, great. Let's pull her up. Let's pull her up to the stage. Because you know who can speak to the power of Girls Club? [12:08] The best people in the world? [12:11] our amazing alumni, my hero. And so I just wanted to say that I was just telling them a little bit about the girls club. And then I'll let you go ahead. But I did want to mention also in 2022, we opened the center for wellbeing and happiness because we know that the wellbeing of our young people at the girls club is intimately connected to their families, to their neighbors and their

[12:41] physical, mental, and financial well-being with workforce development and financial literacy as well. So not only do we have girls club members, but we have their aunties, we have their fathers, we have their cousins, their neighbors. And another thing that we started in the early days of COVID was food distribution. Yeah. [13:02] Health and wellness has always been critical to the Girls Club and food justice work. And so we started doing a food pantry and now we have continued that. We serve about 2,000 to 2,200 members of the community each month, especially with food insecurity and then everything going on with SNAP. We also just launched a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, for SNAP recipients. [13:32] So, you know, it's just kind of meeting the needs, expanding the work that we do and collaborating with community. [13:40] Oh, I love it. [13:41] um aisha it's so nice to meet you thanks for joining [13:45] Hello, can you guys hear me? [13:46] Yeah, we can hear you. [13:48] So, [13:49] So we'd love to like hear your story, hear how you got connected to Lower East Side Girls Club and kind of like, yeah, what what the experience of being a part of their program has been like for you. [13:59] Yeah, I can sing the praises of Girls Club, I think, for the rest of my life. [14:05] I was born in Guinea in a very small rural area. [14:11] And my...

[14:13] grandparents lived, had immigrated to America at the time. [14:17] And they picked LES as the place that they wanted to live. And I was lucky enough to just be walking around [14:25] the LES and there was a lady with a cart, like Jenny mentioned, with art supplies and I had always been interested in [14:35] anything kind of like creative related [14:38] And they kind of just picked me up. And then the rest was history. But I thank Girls Club so much for... [14:46] Honestly playing a crucial... [14:48] role and... [14:50] my life's [14:53] Specifically considering, I think, a lot of... [14:57] how I guess I was supposed to turn out based on statistics was just like [15:03] Nothing like how my life has turned out, where if I grew up in the projects, I grew up low income, I grew up in a very small village. [15:11] across the world and with girls club was a place that just opened the doors for [15:18] Just so many different things that I can't even... Like, I can... [15:22] Just for example, I started my passion for filmmaking at the Lower East Side Girls Club. [15:28] And I was eight years old and my grandpa told me that I talk so much. So he was like, you should be a journalist. And Girls Club had like all these robust programs for anything you were into. If you were into like STEM, if you were into doing radio. And then there was a documentary film program.

[15:45] And I love the idea of visuals and language combined. And that kind of started this [15:51] Passion of mine. [15:52] And then I made my first film ever at the Lower East Side Girls Club and then pursued a career in it, went to college. I went to Barnard College and studied film theory. And then now it's my career now. And that's just one of the amazing benefits. But then also all the friends that I've met there, people like Jenny, my mentors, have a lifelong mentor. [16:14] named Jaron Laryngiani, who [16:18] She's honestly now one of my best friends, but she met me when I was 12, and she would take me to different museums. [16:25] I just think, I definitely think Girls Club just saved my life in a lot of ways, considering how [16:31] I look at the people... [16:33] Back home, I look at some of the people in my family who haven't been able to go after their dreams because of systemic things. [16:40] And I'm just so grateful that they found me. [16:45] Wow. I'm so moved. I like, don't even like, it's hard to, [16:51] process all of this. That was a lot. I know. I can. Oh, I'm like, I'm going to cry. Like, I'm like, I just, yeah, I feel like, [17:01] So like honored to hear your story. I, I, [17:05] Jenny, I knew that you guys were doing good work, but the scope of it is... [17:11] incredible to to hear and also just like

[17:16] It's... [17:16] what's striking to me is just that how [17:21] like long you've been committed to doing this work. And I think that that's something that is really remarkable. It shows just so much integrity to, you know, [17:31] Bye. [17:32] the vision into the machine and like... [17:36] I'm sure there's many times where it could have been far easier to do lots of other stuff and to stay true to people. [17:44] to this and to be able to hear like the, the impact of that, which is Aisha's story is like, it's incredible. And so I'm just like, how can we get you guys so much money? So much more money. [17:56] Yeah. To that point. Also, Aisha, I love you so much. I beam with pride every time I see her. She's just extraordinary and you definitely have to check out her documentary Heat. Yeah. [18:11] It is visually stunning and such a powerful story, and no one could have captured that. [18:19] like Aisha captured it. We'll send you the link for that. Yeah, we'll share it for sure. Yeah. And I think, you know, it just speaks to the ripple effect of Girls Club. We have another alumni who is currently teaching at the Center for Wellbeing and Happiness, Jenna Vallette, who is one of our first members. And she teaches a class called Con Sabor, and it's traditional recipes from her family, but done all plant based. And so it's like the cycle

[18:49] We have a robust alumni network that we provide opportunities for with some of our other partners. You know, so it's just kind of the life cycle of an organization and continuing to see it grow and how young people like Aisha go out into the world and really change it for the better. [19:19] But the unfortunate reality in nonprofits is we need funding to support that work. Every single thing that we do is free for our members. And we also pay, you know, stipends for our members. We pay all of our instructors. The majority of them are from the community because the wisdom lies within the community. So, you know, as we saw some of our federal funding get cut for our food pantry, a lot of our corporate funding comes through diversity, equity and inclusion budgets work. [19:47] really trying to navigate and also seeing some foundations going flat because the economic uncertainty of what's happening. So it's, yeah, it's just critical to, you know, continue to shake that can and just, you know, spread the word of the, you know, extraordinary work that is done here every day by our amazing staff. So we can keep it going. [20:10] Yeah. [20:11] Oh, sorry. Go ahead. [20:13] I know, I can add to that because I think sometimes... [20:16] I feel like there's a misconception when donating money you feel like

[20:21] once it's donated, you're not sure where it goes. Is it actually going to directly impact [20:28] the people you wanted to impact, but... [20:31] I can definitely say firsthand, and I know a lot of my friends at the Girls Club who are experiencing the programming would agree, [20:39] Bye. [20:40] the money that people donate, we almost see it like instantly because [20:46] It's even... [20:47] as little as like the film cameras we use. If there's more money donated, then like we get to use cooler cameras. And then that's something you can take like outside of girls club and then get more work. And, [20:58] the food pantries and stuff like that. People were there. [21:02] every day and I think that there is so much going on. It's nice sometimes, it's nice to donate to things where you feel like, all right, something will happen, like almost like immediately or the next day. [21:14] I'm so glad you brought up cameras because we actually just were doing kind of a review of all of our tech and we were just like, oh, my God, these cameras have just been used to the ground. And so we're figuring that out. But yeah, it's a kind of constant upkeep. Like we we built and when we moved into this building in 2013, so we have a whole sound studio that's actually our audio engineering booth is within an Airstream trailer. [21:41] We trick everything out. This is not a rec center. Oh, you know, our audio engineering board is like 13 years old. And, you know, this stuff you have to upgrade. And, you know, just so that's something to think about. Also, we are we have platinum transparency, which is the highest level that you can have on Candid.

[22:11] programming. Because the unfortunate reality is there are some, you know, charities and some nonprofits that don't really uphold those standards. Yeah. I think also just the longevity of how long you all have been doing this work really speaks to that as well. And it's, I just echo what Dina said. It's such an honor to hear your story and to hear about the work that you [22:41] Like how do they donate if they're looking to donate, if they're looking to volunteer or participate if they're local to New York? Yeah, I would love to just give people a sense of how they can jump in. [22:51] Yeah, they can go to our website and they can reach out to our website. We also have Instagram, which I see you have it right there scrolling. That's cool. I will say, you know, with our mentoring programs that for this year that is set, do have food pantry opportunities and volunteer opportunities for that. [23:21] time job and it's not about our members, it's then providing opportunities for others. But those opportunities do exist. We just handle them very carefully and just make sure it's for all the right reasons. [23:33] Totally. [23:35] Yeah. As long as opportunity, let me tell you, it takes a little itch to keep this place going.

[23:42] Totally. Well, we'll drop some links and make sure everyone knows where they can donate and follow along with your work. But definitely, Aisha, I want to see your work in particular. So Jenny, make sure we get that. And yeah, just an honor to meet you guys, both of you, and to hear from you. And thank you so much for your time. [24:12] favorite dudes or dude presenting or whatever yeah we got to get you some swag so i love that incredibly grateful and eventually we're going to like launch an online store but you know [24:24] it's coming it's coming for that girls club merch plus it's our 30th year we're about to enter our 30th year so we will have a whole campaign um laying that out and just kind of seeing our history and um just sending incredible gratitude this was literally when we got the email i was like is this real is this how so um just thank you and and come over here so we can hug [24:54] you through this fabulous place in person. I love that. [24:57] Okay, thanks so much guys. Talk to you later. [25:01] Thank you. [25:04] Wow. What a feel, feel good. This is a feeler episode. This is a feelings, this is a feelings episode. Um, what just like special people and incredible work that they're doing. And, um,

[25:19] Something that like really sticks out to me is like, [25:23] They're obviously doing this through the food pantry and other programs that I know that they do. That's like the basic needs of people like shelter and food and food. [25:32] like care in that way, but it's so inspiring to see an organization that's like really caring for like the creative output of, um, [25:43] of young people and such an incredible that's like it's clearly working and um yeah i think that that can be really forgotten like how important it is to nurture like someone's dreams and hopes and not just like their basic needs and so um very cool to see and excited to continue to like work with them and um [26:02] yeah and like their programs around financial literacy are like so inspiring and just like again like that mix of [26:08] caring for like a 101 on what people need, but also like how does someone thrive long term? Yeah, I think that to your point around like, [26:18] giving people [26:21] like increasing the surface area for opportunity that having been core to what, why we started boys club and that being so clearly evident that that's what they're doing. The work that they're doing there is just feels so, [26:36] just like a great great synergies synergistic synergistic donation it like come to life you know it's like it's it's really easy to say that and then to hear a story like Aisha's where she's like no it's like literally what happened where she was like given someone hands her camera and otherwise she may have not been

[26:56] may have not been handed that camera at least for a little while and like was able to [27:00] explore in a way and like have the means [27:04] in space to be able to explore it and now is doing what she's doing i think it's just like [27:08] it's hard, yeah, it's hard. [27:12] There's... [27:13] tangible evidence and it's just amazing to think. [27:17] Wow. Well, I, [27:20] Feels good. And if you were a part of... [27:23] the dow in any way if you got a zaddy in any way this is like um as much a [27:29] donation that you made. [27:31] Totally. [27:32] in every way. Um, also the other thing I want to say is that, um, [27:36] I [27:37] Uh. [27:39] there's so i there's so many like bad crypto stories yeah [27:45] Thank you. [27:45] There's so many. Like there's... [27:47] Totally. We can, yeah. Honestly, I'm like, I can't even like look at, barely look at the news anymore because [27:53] one [27:54] one scam after the next was that movie that i haven't watched it yet [27:59] One battle after another. It's one game after another. [28:06] So [28:06] just in a very small way to be able to show [28:10] there was a different side to this industry and the intentions of a lot of people in this industry. I think [28:17] it [28:18] is [28:19] Um, [28:21] nice that we're able to do that and I hope that [28:24] Some of the journalists that are always covering the bad news stories are

[28:30] open to receiving this message because I think it's [28:34] um [28:36] Yeah, it's just a different side that I think doesn't get a lot of play. Yeah, totally. [28:41] Okay. Brittany. Great to do this work alongside you. Totally, totally. And happy, thankful week to all those who celebrate. [28:56] Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you soon. [28:59] Okay, bye.