We recently connected with Kimber Bishop-Yanke and have shared our conversation below.
Kimber, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
By accident! I feel very lucky to have found it. I ended up in an amazing job with a toy company after graduate school. I loved the work but the culture of the company was cut throat. I had the opportunity to go to Mustang, Nepal with the American Himalayan Foundation in 1993. Mustang had never let tourists in until 1992 so we were in the first few hundred tourists that received a permit to trek to this area. I saw extreme poverty for the first time in my life & it changed my life. I knew right then & there I wanted to do something that made a difference. I started my own catalog/website Inspired By…. with the mission of buying products from women artist locally & internationally to tell their stories. I launched this while moving from San Fran to Detroit. I had taught aerobics as a side job & in one the classes I was teaching, a mom was telling me about the struggles her middle school daughter was having with mean girls. I told her my friends & I talked about working with girls to help them build their self-esteem & confidence so they did not have to be mean. She begged me to do a summer camp & I did which launched Girls Empowered now 24 years later Kids Empowered which offers social emotional programs through one on one coaching, summer camps, & workshops. During that time I went on 11 mission trips- I was very involved in an organization in Kenya. I helped raise the funds to build a cafeteria, school bus & soccer field. & organized 8 40 foot containers to ship supplies there. I had volunteered for my church to organize volunteers for a Warming Center. I was asked to help a 22 yr old girl sleeping in her car during the polar vortex in 2019. We called all the numbers they give homeless people. I was so upset by the run around to receiving help that I reached out to our elected leaders. They told me to organize a meeting with the non-profits that served homeless folks and they would come with elected leaders. At the meeting, one of the State Reps stood up and said they wanted to start a local task force and asked me to help. 2 weeks later I saw on Facebook, I was the Chair of the Oakland County Task Force On Poverty and Homelessness. I started holding community meetings to try and figure out how we can make change. I scheduled a small fresh fruit and veggie delivery March 21, 2020 which turned out to be 2 weeks after schools shut down during the pandemic and my business shut down. I threw myself into delivering food to 225 families every week with 50 volunteers which turned into delivering beds, furniture, & clothing because all the non-profits were shut down. Then a school called me a few days before Christmas with a mom who had Covid and six kids (3 that had covid). She was kicked out of the house because of the fear of Covid. I ended up putting the family in the hotel and that started me putting homeless families in hotels. Because Covid went on so long, I ended up getting more involved in helping homeless families and families in poverty. After a year of doing the work, I decided to make it official and pivoted the small nonprofit I had to do social emotional conferences to doing the mission of helping homeless families and those in poverty. Besides doing the actual work of organizing volunteers to deliver food, clothing, furniture, doing the paperwork so people can get services, and paying for homeless families to stay in hotels, deposits for housing, car repairs, phone bills ,etc….. I often am having to advocate for clients to get the services they are suppose to receive. We also have an Adopt a Family for Christmas and Easter. I also meet with elected leaders to try and remove barriers. I believe my purpose is to speak up for those who do not have a voice whether it is a child being bullied or a homeless family.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My goal with Kids Empowered On The Move besides getting homeless families housed is to create a network of volunteers to help serve those in need. We have had over 1600 people involved in some way since the pandemic started. My goal is to try and motivate every day people that this is our problem to address and for us not to wait for the government to take care of our neighbors in need. My goal with Kids Empowered is to continue to do one on one coaching with kids and parents because I love helping kids learn how to stand up for themselves, manage their emotions, develop their social skills and become confident while packaging our curriculum to sell on-line. I have 24 years of experience in empowering kids.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I believe that my strongest quality is my feeling of “Why not?”. Why can’t we make this work? Why can’t we figure out a way? I leave no stone unturned and if someone won’t work with me to figure it out, I will go around them if I can which does not always make me the favorite person in the room. Because of my sense of justice, I am able to handle the personal attacks that come along with trying to change a system or standing up for others.
I think my sense of justice allows me to take risks and stay focused on helping the person in need. I also think teaching kids how to stand up to bullying developed my own skills to do it. Because when I started this journey there was no playbook so I had to create my own curriculum and the more I taught kids these skills I believe I benefited. I went from not feeling like I had a voice as a teen, to becoming a little too aggressive to becoming assertive.
I also like adventure so I would take any opportunity given. This allowed me to just go do……
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
My father was also a “Why not?” person. So I saw him always trying to figure out a way to make it happen for what he wanted.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kidsempowered.com
https://kidsempoweredonthemove.org - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreKidsEmpowered.
Kids Empowered On The Move: https://www.facebook.com/groups/202423821377314
Image Credits
Only one photo: Ksenijasavic.com
