AFJ Participants Launch Online Store in Partnership with Slickdeals
Our participants at Avenues for Justice have launched a new online business, thanks to our corporate partner, Slickdeals. Proceeds will go directly to AFJ's crime prevention programs!
For the past eight weeks, from May to July, staff from Slickdeals led virtual workshops with a focus on entrepreneurship and design skills to help ten of our participants launch an online business - creating, marketing and selling their own products. Training included learning the Figma application so they could upload and edit their drawings and designs.
With NYC reopening, the last three weeks of the workshop was provided both virtually and onsite at our Lower East Side community center – our first in-person workshop since the pandemic began last year in March.
Last Friday, participants proudly presented their final products and website to 20 Slickdeals professionals. At the end of their presentations, the online store went live, displaying a large selection of t-shirts, notebooks, phone cases, posters, stickers, and throw pillows.
Designs on the products were inspired by participants’ personal experiences. One participant based his MarsMountains line of t-shirts and stickers on his love for nature, while another participant’s line of products was inspired by Jackson Pollack’s abstract paintings. One participant remarked how the experience was empowering and that he had never seen himself as an artist before this workshop series.
Andrew Chen, the lead partner at Slickdeals, commented on how the results were beyond anything he and his colleagues had imagined. With tears in his eyes, Andrew expressed how much they appreciated working with AFJ and how talented and full of life AFJ’s participants are. Chen added, “As a society we have failed them, so it was necessary that we gave them this second chance.”
Our store at RedBubble.com will be online long-term with all proceeds going directly to support AFJ’s crime prevention programs.
If your company or organization is interested in partnering with Avenues for Justice to provide online and onsite workshops, please email Samantha Fikilini at sfikilini@avenuesforjustice.org!
