This Month’s Entrepreneurship Fund Kickstarter Grant Winner
Congratulations to our Kickstarter Grant Winners who will receive support for his entrepreneurial project: Brayan Cruz (Tlaxcali) and Sol Lee (Ambrosia).
The Entrepreneurship Fund provides financial support for the entrepreneurial projects of undocumented young people working to create positive social change. Every month we award up to $2,000 short-term, non-renewable funding through our Entrepreneurship Fund Kickstarter Grants.
Tlaxcali
Entrepreneur: Brayan Cruz (California)
Tlaxcali is an immigrant-owned business focused on cultural reclamation and preservation that provides and produces traditional Mesoamerican food. After more than six years growing, saving, and processing heirloom maiz (corn) in a traditional way to provide medicine and food for himself and his community, Brayan Cruz became interested in turning this work into a business. Brayan opened Tlaxcali to help other immigrant queer indigenous people reconnect to their traditional food. Tlaxcali is both a shop and an educational entity that aims to promote and provide culturally relevant food to the local community.
Brayan is an indigenous immigrant from Xochimilco, Mexico, who is passionate about reconnecting immigrant queer youth to their traditional food and practices that have been neglected. Brayan believes that the preservation of traditional food is directly connected to the preservation of seeds, children, mothers, elders, relatives, and land. Brayan collaborates with community members in his city who are leading food sovereignty initiatives to help manage their gardens and facilitate workshops on food sovereignty.
Ambrosia
Entrepreneur: Sol Lee (California)
As a young person with so much still to become, Sol Lee identified most with a few titles that did not always feel particularly special: an immigrant with a precarious future, a woman, a reader, a writer. Her large family immigrated from South Korea in 2009 and she grew up not knowing where they would be or whether they would be together at any moment. Great literature was always Sol’s refuge through these turbulent times, especially during her family’s decade-long immigration woes. As a first-generation college student, Sol dreamed about democratizing a storytelling industry particularly slow to respond to technology – and not always kind to underrepresented voices like hers.
Sol spent four years earning a degree in Literature at UCLA and also collaborated with experienced startup founders to build various mission-driven technology companies. This gave her a deep empathy and conviction toward the world of writers and publishers, and also equipped her with the know-how to get a self-sustaining business off the ground. For years, it’s been her personal moonshot to build a community where great stories–especially narratives from immigrant/otherwise marginalized voices–can be shared and promoted for the first time.
Ambrosia is a community for discovering and promoting emerging writers. Its for-profit social enterprise monetizes its services by lending bestselling books and underrepresented works to subscription-based members.
Eager to kickstart your entrepreneurial or freelance project? Consider applying for a Kickstarter Grant today. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed every month. Learn More
