My Morehouse brother John Jordan and I was awarded the Echoing Green Fellowship to launch a new organization called “Fight For Light”, which is dedicated to building a robust pipeline for 21st century leaders of color. Today, I am emailing you with some exciting updates on our latest accomplishments and upcoming fundraising efforts.

First, It is my honor to invite you and the rest of the Bay Area Morehouse Alumni Network to Fight For Light’s 1st fundraising event with special guest Van Jones on Friday, August 2nd at HUB Oakland located at 1423 Broadway Street, Oakland, CA 94621. Your presence would be an invaluable addition to the program.

We want to make sure that we get Morehouse, Spelman and other HBCU Alumni in the room, so if you know anyone that you think we should connect with, please let us know and we will send them a personal invitation.

The theme of the event will be “Illumination.” During this event, we will discuss the need to increase diversity within the green movement and showcase our vision to illuminate the path for thousands of young leaders attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the country.

The evening will commence with a reception from 5:30pm to 6:00pm, followed by the main program and speech by Van Jones with ample time being given for engaging activities and a networking session. Morehouse, Spelman and other HBCU Alumni could purchase tickets now here: http://bit.ly/13akN1G

Fight For Light is also launching a crowd funding campaign to raise $50,000 for the Brianna Ford Fellowship, which is a two-year student leadership development program designed to train students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to develop creative market-based solutions for social, environmental and economic issues while simultaneously putting them on a fast-track toward social impact careers.

If some folks can’t make the event don’t worry, they could support our crowdfunding campaign here:http://fundly.com/gpcyu00y

Here are some other exciting updates on their work:

Fight For Light has launched a website (www.fightforlight.org)

Fight For Light has been feature in major news articles and blogs (Harvard Business Review, TheRoot.com, Ebony Magazine, The Grist.org, and others)

Markese Bryant of Fight For Light has been invited as a keynote speaker at AASHE’s 2013 Conference & Expo–North America’s largest higher education sustainability conference

If you have time, please check out this article, it is really timely and relevant to Fight For Light’s value proposition—“Dear Green Movement, you need more color”)

Looking forward to connecting this weekend,

Markese