Education

Fruitful and multiplying: Non-profit organization, Seeds of Fortune, continues breaking financial barriers for disadvantaged women in education

By YAMINAH SMITH Special to the AmNews

As religious ethics fight to stay alive many faithful followers continue planting their sacred seeds throughout humanity. While the seeds may hold the same neighborly values, the soil that nourishes them often differs from person to person. For Nitiya Walker, founder and executive director of the non-profit organization Seeds of Fortune Inc., her seeds bloom from the rich soil of financial and educational empowerment.

At Seeds of Fortune Inc., maintaining a national scholars and ed-tech platform for young, marginalized women takes priority. This platform allows them to gain financial and educational resources. From working with young women as they navigate the college admissions and scholarship processes to training them on financial literacy, the organization fights to address the economic hardships of non-white students. This fight entails helping young women from disadvantaged communities find affordable post-secondary options, most often college, and teaching them career and financial management skills.

“With Seeds, I wanted to help the girls get college scholarships, but I also wanted to use it as a fundamental way to teach them about financial management,” Walker said. “Since slavery, education has been a way for us to have social-economic mobility. But now that student loan debt is so high: education has reverse effects. It is the American dream to go to college, graduate, and get a job, but that’s not necessarily the smooth sailing system that’s happening for minority students. By the time you get out, you almost have a mortgage load of debt that you have to pay back. Which then delays their ability to start investing money, purchasing homes and starting businesses like they would want to, to create their own economic wealth.”

Walker started her non-profit organization in 2014 as a senior at Babson College. As a Black undergraduate student, the New York native faced her own financial struggles while on the path to obtaining a college degree. “Trying to afford college at the time when I was trying to go was difficult. There was no way that my parents could afford for me to go to college with the price tags that were around then,” Walker said. Fortunately for Walker, she received the help of a Girl Scout leader at her church in Brooklyn, NY. “She worked with me for five to six weeks in the Brooklyn Public Library, teaching me techniques on how to position myself for college applications and scholarships,” Walker said. With the trooper’s help, Walker obtained enough money in scholarships to afford college.

Although her financial success empowered her, disappointment quickly followed behind. “When I got to undergrad, I realized that everyone did not have this information on how to secure scholarships for colleges,” Walker said. “I found that a lot of time, for us, as students of color on campus, there was not a lot of financial information distributed to us. This information was just not communicated.” This realization led Walker down the path of her current mission to break financial barriers for nonwhite women in education.

What started in the Brooklyn Public library with just three girls now encompasses 1,000 members, over $15 million in scholarships and grants and a 100% graduate rate for those that stay in the Seed’s programs.

Yet, the work of the Seeds doesn’t end at financial issues. The non-profit also aids their members in establishing a fruitful bond amongst each other. “I like Seeds because I get to meet new people, which is amazing,” Seeds member Jasmin Turkson said on a live stream with Walker. “We’d be in the Bootcamp and, we’d just be talking about our high school experiences and it was just genuine. Genuine friendships. Genuine sisterhood.”

Jasmin, who learned about the Seeds of Fortune organization from a friend’s social media page, now holds the title of a proud member. “I was looking for a program that would help me get money for college. So, when I saw the post, I was like, this looks interesting. I have to get on it. I have to apply,” Jasmin said. Fortunately for her, she found

ring involving young girls when he was arrested and charged in December 2020, said the AG’s office.

The investigative team determined that Alexander trafficked girls aged 12 to 16 across county lines for sex. Between 2018 and 2020, Alexander would “lure” female teenage victims to his apartment in Bronx County, often using marijuana and food to entice them. Once there, Alexander would attempt to perform sexual acts with them, expose himself to them, and show the victims nude photographs, said the AG’s office.

“The sexual exploitation of children is disgraceful, sickening, and blatantly illegal,” said James in a statement. “Adults have the responsibility to protect children, yet Alexander’s alleged actions exposed minors to untold pain and suffering. My office will continue to use every tool in our arsenal to root out sex traffickers and child abusers, and bring justice to their victims.”

Ossorio said that opposing bills Gottfried supports would lead to an increase in the demand in the sex trade. She said NOWNY is sounding the alarm on the “dangerous” bills in the legislature that will decriminalize everything.

“As it is to meet the current demand, traffickers, pimps, import women from other countries. They find vulnerable women so that men can have women they buy for sex, and they target our kids to meet demand,” said Ossorio. “They go to the poorest neighborhoods across our city to get them.”

Gottfried’s office argued that partial criminalization is fundamentally wrong in assuming that demand for “sexual services is what drives people into sex work” and that all sex work is “inherently exploitive.”

Gottfried’s office said the bills maintain punishments against trafficking, coercion, sexual abuse, sex work involving minors, and rape without stopping sex work between consenting adults.

Sex workers won’t be treated or isolated as criminals vulnerable to abuse, as it is under current New York law, said Gottfried’s office.

Gottfried’s office said that charges under the “broadly defined crime of ‘promoting’ sex work” isn’t always helpful to investigative teams looking to end sex trafficking rings, like in Pinckney’s or Alexander’s cases.

It usually means that a friend or loved one providing shelter, transportation, and even condoms to a sex worker is made a criminal just for trying to offer some measure of safety, said Gottfried’s office.

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America Corps member and writes about culture and politics in New York City for the AmsterdamNews. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting: https://tinyurl.com/fcszwj8w

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