ATLANTA — They're open for business and building a brand!
For 15-year-old Elijah Reese, a kiosk on Peachtree Street in Downtown Atlanta is not only platform to success, it's a switch from selling water on street corners.
The bottled water now carries the 'Hey! Hydrate!' brand, falling under a special program run by Helping Empower Youth. The nonprofit mentors young Black men on Atlanta's Westside, and for the past year and a half, that's included a focus on entrepreneurship via water sales.
"We've had a lot of conversation about young men selling water at intersections," KaCey Venning, co-founder of the nonprofit, explained. "As a result of trying to find other ways to really encourage and support their entrepreneurial spirit, they decided that if folks are knowing us for selling water, then let's do that, but how do we own the process from beginning to end. Hey! Hydrate! really came about as a way for them to really know the in's and out's of what it means to have a bottle of water in their hands and ask someone to exchange for currency for it."
Since September, the program has also been a part of Downtown Atlanta's kiosk program, hoping to raise visibility about what the young men are doing.
The teens are able to sell their branded water at their kiosk outside of Peachtree Street MARTA station, Venning said. Meanwhile, the program as a whole is used as an "inhouse incubator" for the teens to learn business principles they can apply anywhere.
The program launched following a season of controversy around water sales. During the summer of 2020 and the height of the pandemic, it was estimated that at least 300 kids and teens were out selling bottles every day.
After calls for intervention, community leaders like Venning stepped up to help. Through Helping Empower Youth, Venning says her team helped move 25 young men from the corners of busy Westside intersections to the Hey! Hydrate! program.
'"Really we've been uncovering the long-term effects of poverty and how do we help minimize effects for them through programs like Hey! Hydrate!, the summer business intensive, the STEM program that we do," Venning said.
Hey! Hydrate! aims to fill the gap, offering the teens a way to safely sell and make money. Reese envisions the program expanding and in the meantime, hopes it will change some minds.
"I want [people] to know that the reason I come out here is to show them I'm not the picture they paint us as," he said. "I want to show that I'm a respectful young man. I just want to make profit the way that any person makes profit."
Learn more about the nonprofit and the Hey! Hydrate! program here.