Black Professional: A Village

It's been a dream of mine for a while.

The goals of this project: to create a web village, full of mastercraftsmen and apprentices, that exchange advice on a variety of topics affecting the African-American community.

The logistics are sorta simple: it's an amalgamation of the admission requirements of Sermo, the forum capabilities and moderators of TelevisionWithoutPity, the vision of Bill Cosby, the sage perspectives of the Elder Wisdom Circle and the black people of urban and rural America.

The website will focus on recruiting young black men and women in an effort to "jumpstart" their experience with the professional world.

The site will consist of two entities: the Neighborhood, and The Village Forum

The Neighborhood is an assortment of succinct pages that are updated often. Within the pages, there will be links to various other "peer reviewed" websites and articles of interest to the up-and-coming Black professional. The Neighborhood is meant to be short and enticing to everyone who visits, which should prompt them to submit their CV/resume to The Village Forum.

The Village Forum is where the magic happens. Here, people will log in under their username, which will be a derivation of their names. Like Sermo, each partipant will have a designation, either "professional" or "apprentice".

Like TelevisionWithoutPity, the forum has endless possibilities but will be closely monitored for abuse. Solicitation will be strictly forbidden; this site is not a BlackPlanet or Match.com or CareerBuilders. In fact, there can be links to places such as this (which could garner financial contributions.)

Ultimately, I think of our village as a place where the successful in all walks of life have ready access to serious individuals who are looking for guidance and advice. I hope the Neighborhood will serve to nurture human thought and compassion and truly elevate the discourse between our young and old, our gay our straight, our rich our poor, our successful and struggling, our educated and less educated.

No other site that I have found fulfills such an ambitious goal. But I'm cautiously optimistic that this will work. I just need to sit down and write out a business plan and figure out funding.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. :)