Nearly six years ago, then-teacher Haneef Hardy started hanging out with a student after class who seemed like he needed some extra support.
Now, Hardy spends his afternoons with 60 students. And running that program is his full-time job.
Unlimited Potential has been serving West Baltimore youth as an official nonprofit since 2020. Its goal, Hardy says, is simple.
“I would describe Unlimited Potential as being a mentor organization that focuses on entrepreneurship, financial literacy and arts,” Hardy said. “But the main goal of it is to help youth go from the fixed mind to the growth mind.”
Hardy says he “started with no money, and I still have no money.” But what he does have is local resources.
Last Monday, for example, representatives from Youth as Resources, a student-led leadership group, talked to Unlimited Potential attendees about grants they give to youth with change-making ideas.
“I'm trying to encourage people to tap into those resources, really start there, because those will give you the motivation,” Hardy said. “It all starts with the resources that come in the community, because everybody has something to bring to the table.”
Connecting with those long-established community partners can help youth access the funding and other supplies that can make their ideas realities, Hardy said.
The Baltimore Banner talked to nine-year-old Sky Jones, an Unlimited Potential student who uses the entrepreneurial skills she gained in after-school workshops to support her family’s boutique business.
Hosting all these workshops and resources in one location, a recreational center Hardy calls “the hub,” is key, he said.
“We implement these opportunities in this space to give [youth] a fighting chance to know that these things are actually available,” he said.
Hardy knows programs like his have a “ripple effect” – for participants’ families, and their own futures.
“We don’t turn kids away,” Hardy said. “And the goal is to reduce the crime, reduce the violence, and give kids an opportunity to know that there's another way to be cool out there. To have something culturally-related for them to buy into, so they will have a reason to want to hang out here; they will have a reason to get off the streets.”
Unlimited Potential is still in its own growing phase. Last year, the program only had around 15 attendees.
This is the first year that the nonprofit will partner with a Baltimore city school, Furman Templeton Preparatory Academy, where Hardy used to teach.
The school also happens to be right across the street from Hardy’s resource center. This year, he will lead a board of advisors that oversees the space.
Hardy says his goal for the next year is to track data and practices more intentionally, to form a blueprint of Unlimited Potential that others can follow.
“We can scale it, redefine it and really be able to take it to other places and let people know like ‘Hey, it has been shown to work,’ and go from there,” he said.
This story is published in partnership with The Baltimore Banner and Maryland Public Television as part of the Baltimore News Collaborative, a project exploring the challenges and successes experienced by young people in Baltimore. The collaborative is supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. News members of the collaborative retain full editorial control.
