NEW YORK — Walking through the Brooklyn charter school he founded a decade ago, Rafiq Kalam Id-Dim explains the colorful imagery that lines the hallways and classrooms. 

"Our goal is to uplift all of the parts of ourselves as Black and brown people that are typically overlooked and discarded,” says Kalam Id-Dim. “And so we're really intentional about that. You'll see that in the colors that we choose, you'll see that in the messages that we put on the walls, the people that we highlight."

What You Need To Know

  • The founder of the Ember Charter School is one of the first five recipients of the social justice fund

  • The $50 million fund was established by The Tsai Foundation to help tackle racial inequality

  • Clara and Joe Tsai, who own the Nets and the Barclays Center, announced the fund’s creation in August

  • The goal is to donate the money over the next 10 years to leaders and initiatives that elevate Black and brown lives

The Ember Charter School for Mindful Education Innovation and Transformation in Bedford-Stuyvesant was founded with a kindergarten and elementary school, and just expanded to add a high school. Kalam Id-Dim says the school takes a comprehensive approach to helping children.

"If we're really going to disrupt generational poverty and racism, you have to be involved in the architecture itself, and that's what we focus on,” says Kalam Id-Dim. “A person doesn't just show up to our school with just one challenge. Their family comes with health challenged, economic challenges, they are struggling with trauma. They're struggling getting access to healthy food and great health services."

To support his mission, Kalam Id-Dim will receive $20,000 from the Tsai Foundation. The school’s leader is one of the first five recipients of a $50 million fund launched over the summer by Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center owners Clara and Joe Tsai after the Black Lives Matter protests. The grants are intended to fund programs and people promoting the social and economic advancement of people of color. The four other initial recipients are a doctor, scientist, journalist, and criminal justice activist.

"What Clara and Joe are doing by investing $50 million over the next 10 years is transformational,” said Kalam Id-Dim. “The Tsai Foundation has committed to saying, we believe that Black people should lead to the solutions in the community. They just need the resources. They have the vision. They have the vision. They have the ideas."

Kalam Id-Dim says the foundation will allow him the freedom to use the money in areas where the school and its students need it most.

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