Our collective minds are blown, from an explosive cocktail of gratitude, pride, and a dash of fatigue at what transpired last night at the Power of Clean Open House for the Living Redemption Youth Opportunity Hub in Harlem. Award-winning actor Sterling K. Brown (Black Panther, This is Us) joined Clorox, Thrive Collective, Community Connections for Youth, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to celebrate the transformative power of clean at the new Living Redemption Youth Opportunity Hub in Harlem, New York, on Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018. The space was cleaned with a grant from Clorox and the help of 250 community volunteers to create new possibilities for youth as an arts hub and mentoring center. (Photos above by Diane Bondareff/Invision for Clorox/AP Images)
A more proper recap will come. But for now, enjoy a taste from social.
From Business Insider:
In addition to his work on “This Is Us” and an upcoming appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” Brown recently partnered with Clorox and the non-profit Thrive Collective to help turn an old school building in Harlem into a youth arts center.
“I think that in this world today, there’s this conversation about what’s most important. Am I my brother’s keeper? Am I not? Do I need to just take care of myself or do I have a responsibility to my community? I believe the answer to that question is yes, you have a responsibility,” said Brown. “They got 250 volunteers to come together to clean the space to create something for children and the arts.”
From Huffington Post:
“Being a dad and having two boys it’s important for me to raise them with certain sorts of values. I want them to take responsibility for their space. I want them to be kind and resilient human beings. It’s really interesting, the research that Clorox has done shows that taking ownership of your space and providing something that’s clean will make you more productive. There are also ties to show that it also makes you more empathetic … And when you grow up to be an adult you feel a sense of responsibility to your community. So cleaning is not just an end unto itself. Cleaning is the beginning.
“[Clorox has] used that paradigm to create this wonderful space through Thrive Collective — this youth arts center. Just a couple of months ago it was a run-down school, and now they’ve created a space where kids can express themselves ― visually, artistically … There’s over 400 schools that Thrive Collective works with that have lost their arts funding in New York City, primarily [its] inner-city areas. So when you take those things away from kids it makes it seem that imagination is not something that should be prized or important. As an actor myself, my imagination, without it, you couldn’t do what I do.”
From Entertainment Tonight:
“The incentive was being a dad and wanting my kids to grow up to be responsible, kind, resilient citizens of the world,” Brown said of his involvement with Clorox and Thrive Collective, and the importance of cleaning. “It turns out, doing these things are taking responsibility for yourself and it helps with your ability to connect with another human being. What’s more important than that?”
From Extra TV:
Sterling has also been busy partnering with Clorox, which brought hundreds of local volunteers together to clean and transform a former school into a new Thrive Collective arts and mentoring center for at-risk youth in Harlem. While revealing the new space, Sterling pointed out, “Just a couple of months ago, it was an abandoned schoolroom badly in need of some coats of paint, and we got 250 members of this community to get together to clean this place up and make some new possibilities for these kids.”
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