Mission

We aim to create healthy sustainable urban communities by engaging youth employment, education and healthy living opportunities.

History

In 2002, Olu Quamina watched youth in the Alexandra Park community trade in the prospect of a high school diploma for ownership of a shiny new bicycle – the vehicle given to youth as a formal inauguration to the community’s drug dealing world.

Since then, Olu Quamina has worked to empower youth, especially those susceptible to gang membership, to consider a variety of positive alternatives. By offering programs that combined resources with support for academic and/or career trajectories, youth accessed healthier options that impacted their lives in more positive ways. To pay tribute to the efforts and success of the youth that he worked with over the years, he then decided to title the collection of programs “Concrete Roses”.

In 2011, he then went on to found the non-profit organization Concrete Roses Youth Services; and in 2012, partnered with Karima Kinlock in order to bring a research & analysis element to the growth of programs and overall organization.

Together, the Concrete Roses Youth Services Management Staff, the Board of Directors and the Advisory Board, seek to reach youth in urban communities, and bridge gaps between corporations, community agencies, and schools in order to address social issues that threaten healthy sustainable communities:

• Poverty
• Crime
• Education
• Employability

For more information, please read About Us