From episode: Favela Boys Apparel: Empowering Underserved Communities Through Fashion and STEM
So I know that one of your vision and aspiration is to sponsor STEM programs. So why the interest in STEM? The reason the interest in STEM, I work. So let me tell you what I do. Outside of this, I have a normal nine to five. Right. OK, so I work in the STEM field. So my job currently as a business development manager for Intel with an S .H .I. My job function is mainly talking to customers, mostly schools, universities, mostly I cover public sector. So I have conversation about their curriculum, the hardware piece. That's where Intel comes in. The funding, the grant and space design. So what we've seen is that STEM is also attached to e -sports. Right. So e -sports is the largest right after the NFL. Yeah. Can you tell us what is e -sports? e -sports is entertainment sports. It's gaming, competitive gaming. OK. So you have thousands of schools in the United States giving out scholarship for e -sports. Wow. We at S .H .I., we had what we call Battle Academy, which was a scholastic e -sports tournament platform. We were giving out hundreds of thousand dollars for curriculum, hardware and space design to schools and everything. So I go to a lot of conferences. We have a lot of OEM partners like LG, Intel, Microsoft, all the big manufacturers. They all have interest in e -sports because e -sports is attached to STEM. And the reason STEM is very important is there's a lot of open positions right now. Millions, hundreds of thousands of open positions right now that we cannot fill in America. Seriously. So we have to get outside workers to come in to fill these roles. Yeah. Yeah. So the thing is, we have a lot of young black male and women, Hispanic, Asian, white, whatever, who can fill in these roles. So why don't we, why don't we like. Wait a minute. You said who can fill in this role? But we all know about the low representation of our population in the STEM field. Many of them are not really interested in STEM education. So how can they fill those without experience and knowledge? How can they fill those? That's why we come in. That's why we want to. That's what Fervolo Boy is about, right? Because we know these young people, they love clothing. They got style, they love wearing. So they're already spending their money in clothing. They all like wearing, they're already there. This is innovative. So while we attach it, bring the awareness because the clothing is the awareness as well. And also showing the beauty is all connected. So they're spending the clothing. The clothing business is a trillion dollar business is only increasing even more. Absolutely. Right. So my thing is, we know where they are. Yeah. We know what interests these kids. And people always want to wear nicest clothes, right? You go on TikTok, you go on Instagram. People always want to dress in a different way, different clothes and everything, right? So why don't we create a clothing that is cool to wear, that is nice. The aesthetics is beautiful. Also gives back, right? Also showing their beauty, but at the same time, give them interest into STEM. Because some people don't know what STEM is. That's true. Then now they're going to have the understanding of STEM. But at the same time, we have a bunch of young kids in the inner cities, they're all gamers. Gaming and STEM go hand in hand. Absolutely. So we increase the interest, have the understanding, hey, I can go ahead and be cybersecurity. I can go ahead and not only do all these other things.
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