NASHVILLE, TENN. (WTVF) — A Nashville teen mentoring program is raising money to support its youth one shirt at a time.
The organization O.L.L.I.E Lifestyle mentors 120 children. O.L.L.I.E stands for Only Living Life In Excellence.
Co-founder Dred Yehudeh is a New Jersey native. He moved to Nashville for school and said the program started about nine years ago. The goal at that time was to give back to the community but the program has turned into a motivational speaking and mentoring program.
"Myself and my co-founder, we come from broken neighborhoods, hard neighborhoods and we wanted to give back. We definitely wanted to make sure the children of today don't go through some of the things that we went through when we were growing up and we just wanted to give them different perspectives. We feel like the torch has been passed to us to make sure the next generation can do better than what we did," Yehudeh said.
Throughout the year, events including backpack drives, food drives, car washes, and an annual charity kickball tournament are held to support the teens.
On Saturday, the group launched its O.L.L.I.E Lifestyle t-shirt campaign and they hope the community will help.
"One of the things we thought of when we made this was whether you are a young person, whether you're an elder, whether you're a business professional everybody wants to live their life in excellence which is the idea. So when we put this on, it's almost like it's our armor and we're ready to go on in the world and just be the best people that we can be," Yehudeh said.
CEO and co-founder Tyjuan Garth said his program is about the community, the youth, and making change. The program also helps mentor detainees at the juvenile detention center.
"That's what we pride ourselves on is that we're always in the lives of our teens. We're not just there once every two weeks. We're going to show them that we are someone they can call on and depend on at all times," Garth said.
T-shirts can be bought at D'Zone BTQ located at 2546 Lebanon Pike or online at www.ollielifestyle.com.
