Hyattsville, MD December 1, 2008 – I Got Heart (IGH), a not-for-profit social enterprise based in the DC metro area that guides, rewards, and celebrates area teenagers that display heart in overcoming life’s challenges, is celebrating its official inauguration in February of 2009. As part of the launch, the organization will honor a deserving teen with the first-ever Heart Award in a ceremony hosting invited guests including local elected officials, a variety of leaders from education and nonprofits, parents and community members.
Founder of I Got Heart, Tip Fallon, a budding social entrepreneur who left a stable engineering career to follow his own heart - empowering today’s youth to make positive changes in their lives and showcase their actions – is proud of the progress he has seen teens make firsthand when they make intentional decisions to enrich their lives and not get caught up in the negativity they face daily. “Life is not about a high-income lifestyle,” Fallon who grew up in a Maryland neighborhood where very few went on to complete a four-year college career says, but rather, “the core values learned regardless of your family background; values such as perseverance, sacrifice, helping your neighbor, and humility – or in other words, Heart.”
About 10 applicants vied for the pilot program award valued at $500, each of which submitted essays detailing their biggest life struggles, how they display heart and positive judgments in overcoming them, and what they would do with the money. I Got Heart then follows up with the award recipients to document how the award has created deep and lasting changes in their lives. In 2009 the non-profit envisions monthly Heart Awards to help disadvantaged teens find better alternatives to the drugs, violence and lack of guidance that surrounds them. Kepa Freeman, Program Director of Teens Express commends I Got Heart’s initiatives saying, “The Awards give them the opportunity to look critically at a problem in their community and take action to solve it.” The organization has a unique ‘for us, by us’ model in which teens drive the fundraising through orders for the organization’
I Got Heart was founded in 2007 and is shaping to grow to a national level in the course of three years. The organization’
For additional information on I Got Heart and the approaching Heart Awards or to schedule an interview with Tip Fallon, please call Awoyaa Mensah at 443.567.9242 or email Awoyaa at awoyaa@speakingforchange.com . Also visit www.IGotHeartOnline.org for testimonials and videos.
