A Promise. A Vision. A Future.

Steven Poe grew up in the Logan section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — a neighborhood that taught him early what it meant to be Black in America, to survive systems that were never built for you, and to find your way anyway.

For 27 years, Steven worked in management in Environmental Services departments in hospitals and nursing homes in the Philadelphia and surrounding areas, making sure those buildings stayed clean, safe, and running for patients and staff. But something was building inside him that a job title couldn't contain.

It started with a television screen. A child shot by a cop. Kids in handcuffs who didn't know they had the right to stay silent. Parents coaching their children in interrogation rooms because nobody had ever told them the rules of the game. Steven couldn't unsee it. So he started reading. Researching. And then building — because that is what his people have always done when the door was closed.

That research became Black n Blue 215 — a platform created with his co-host Philly Spu to give Black and Brown communities in Philadelphia the legal knowledge, civic information, and survival tools that school never taught and the system hoped they'd never find. Because only one race of people in this country has to teach their children how to act when a police officer pulls them over. Steven decided somebody had to say it out loud.

But the work didn't stop at the law. It led him to mental health — specifically to the crisis that lives quietly inside nearly every Black family in Philadelphia. When his youngest son needed emergency psychiatric care, Steven learned the difference between a 302 and a 201. He learned to call 988 instead of 911. He learned how many families don't know what he now knows — and how much damage that gap causes every single day.

And then there is Shavonna. His daughter. MooMoo. She was 16 years old when she died by suicide. The family never received counseling. None of them. That loss — and the silence around it — became the heartbeat of everything Steven builds now. Because he knows firsthand what happens when Black children carry pain that nobody ever gives them a space to name.

Steven is the father of six children, grandfather to 16 grandchildren, and great-grandfather to 1 great-grandchild. His grandchildren call him when they get in trouble — because he listens, and because he tries to understand where they are, not just tell them where they should be.

He turned 60 this year. And he will tell you plainly: he has more days behind him than in front of him. That is exactly why he built this. He wants his grandchildren to have a chance. He wants their children to have a chance. He watched the world shift in 2017 and decided he was done watching it from the couch.

"We got to reprogram. Sit down and have a conversation with our kids. Put down the cell phone. Put down the TikTok. Sit down and ask your child every day — what's going on? How was school today? We're going back to the basics."

40 Acres & A Summer School is Steven Poe's answer to everything he has seen, survived, lost, and learned. It is the legacy he is building while he still can.