Executive Summary

DBG trains kids for life, bending to fill in the gaps and address the social and educational deficits brought about by widespread poverty and racial inequity. It is the organization’s mission to help as many young people as possible explore their identities, find their voices, and change the course of their lives for the better.

DBG’s careful attention to the needs of Detroit’s students stems directly from its CEO and founder, Khali Sweeney, whose experiences growing up on Detroit’s east side have been incorporated into the organizational culture and method of program delivery. Inundated by the impacts of poverty and deprived of support, academic resources, and access to basic needs, Khali and others like him were raised to believe that they were headed to jail or the morgue. So many of the students this organization serves have been saddled with the same false narrative. DBG’s focus on mentorship and relationship building enables them to meet students where they are and to forge deep, meaningful connections that surpass surface level assumptions. The organization’s programmatic approach targets barriers like food insecurity, transportation paucity, social disconnection, and the digital divide through a powerful combination of individualized intervention, enrichment, and mentorship that helps build the social-emotional skills needed to ensure success in the classroom and beyond. Consequently, Books Before Boxing is not just DBG’s core philosophy, but its signature strategy - strategy evidenced by the organization's 100% graduation rate, more than 300 successful program graduates, and growing wait list of more than 2000 interested students.

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