Today we’d like to introduce you to Tracy Moss and Courtney Hooker.
Tracy Moss has been self-employed since entering the job market as a young adult, and Courtney Hooker has made a name for herself in education, from math teacher to Dean of Students. Both graduated from Hampton University, but 15 years apart. As a matter of fact, Courtney is Tracy’s younger sister. Tracy received a B.S. in Marketing and then went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received an MBA. Courtney received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and then received her Masters in Educational Leadership from Georgia State University.
From the time Tracy entered college, she knew that she wanted to own a hair salon, so that is what she prepared for and educated herself on doing with every job and class project. She opened her first salon at age 30 and has continued to work in that industry.
It was near the end of her daughter, Sydney’s first year of elementary school when she realized that summer meant searching for something for the kids to do each week. No longer did she have the comfort of the extended daycare calendar. At the last minute, she found a great art camp that miraculously had openings. She immediately enrolled her daughter for every week. The only problem that now existed was that the summer camps ended when the public schools began- because her daughter attended private school, she had an additional week of summer, without a camp!
Seeing as how she could not be productive in a hair salon with a five years old for a week, Tracy took vacation that week. After discussing her disbelief with another friend, who had a child in her daughter’s class as well as two older children, Tracy suggested that their kids hang out that week. The other mother agreed to the idea. Now, she had to figure out what to do with four children for the coming week.
Tracy immediately thought back to a specific two-week period of one childhood summer that stuck with her forever. Her aunt gathered a group of nieces, nephews and cousins of varying ages and taught them about figures and events in black history, quotes, songs and plays. That time had such a profound effect on her that she could still remember the songs they learned, To Tracy, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to deliberately teach her daughter and friends about black history.
Tracy and the other mother asked the other African American families in the lower school of the private school if they wanted their kids to attend, and they all replied yes. They had a total of 13 children who met in her basement. This is where Courtney entered, she was home from college and staying in said basement for the summer, so she automatically was the first intern. At that time, the camp was called African American Achievement Camp, but that was the start of Go Beyond Your Knowledge.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I would describe the growth of Go Beyond Your Knowledge as a path of passion, persistence and commitment.
We have worked through a couple of business models over the course of our 18 years. We finally settled into being a non-profit organization that provides scholarships for children and teens to attend camps and other educational programs. Our fundraisers fall into two categories- donations, fundraising events and educational services. The Black History Camp and other programming services fall under educational services. Our two fundraisers are the Mother-Son Soiree and Breakfast with St. Nicholas. If we had to identify any struggles, it would be the growth of these two events.
Please tell us about Go Beyond Your Knowledge.
Go Beyond Your Knowledge specializes in creating dynamic programming for children and teens. We pride ourselves in transferring knowledge in a fun, creative and out of the box way. One such program is our 20 years old Black History Camp. Our proudest moment came this summer when we received a message from one of our former campers, now a 25 years old teacher. He expressed how thankful he was to have had the opportunity to attend our camps as an elementary student. He said it gave him a great foundation and an outlet to just be. Children’s resilience can sometimes cause us to overlook a need for comfort and compassion.
Like every other business, GoByk’s normal operation was challenged by the coronavirus pandemic. We enthusiastically pushed through by swiftly altering our model to one that could keep children engaged in online learning. The true challenge was delivering content to a generation that was forced into online learning and were quite frankly zoom-ed out. We were so successful in our delivery that we found ourselves having to add two additional sessions- one for older children and another for teens.
As a result of the pandemic, parents are going to be making different decisions in regards to their children’s education, and GoByk is preparing to make adjustments to fit their needs. You can look forward to more online classes in Black History as well as moving some of the pre-planned 2020/2021 programs to online capabilities.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I now know the value of surrounding yourself with those that specialize in fundraising and PR. That would have had a great impact on how we moved forward in the fundraising environment.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gobeyondyourknowledge.org
- Phone: 404-919-5987
- Email: info@gobeyondyourknowledge.org
- Instagram: go_beyond_your_knowledge
- Facebook: Go Beyond Your Knowledge “GoByk”
Image Credit:
Andre Brown, photographer for personal shot and St. Nicholas with the kids shot
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