When we first saw Childish Gambino’s "This is America," we saw a visual representation of centuries of oppression. The song and music video highlighted an America that was not just negligent of its own flaws, but one that embraced and danced over them. When creating our remix of "This is America," it made sense to apply that concept of economic, financial and systemic hindering of black America to higher education, while utilizing pop culture to demonstrate our solution. We wanted to show the juxtaposition of the greatest parts of a university setting, contrasted with the raw, unsettling reality of our generation’s debt that is amounting to a crisis.
It’s getting harder and harder to convince students in America that the higher education system is not a scam created to put a new kind hindrance on our future. America’s youth are working hard to obtain knowledge and increase their value to society, and for some reason, we are getting punished for it financially.
We saw there was room for a solution to the student crisis. PeduL became that solution. PeduL is a platform where students raise money for college, trade school or any educational endeavors. Students go to our platform, raise money for school and we send that money from their campaign to their institution in the form of a scholarship. When our company, PeduL, first met Gary Vaynerchuk on Karen Civil’s Good Looking Out for Complex, he said it best: “This student loan debt issue will have a huge impact on our economy. If solutions like PeduL are not taken advantage of, our country could be looking at a recession just as bad, if not worse, than what we saw in 2008.”
We’re now currently in the process of building out our Common Application for scholarships in conjunction with the PeduL platform. This is a platform where anyone can build a scholarship, source awardees and where students can simultaneously apply to thousands of scholarships with one application and supplemental questions. As said best by my co-founder Kayla Michele (@itsKaylaMichele), our goal is to increase access. A principle that we’ve seen executed by other millennial entrepreneurs that we respect like, Ryan Williams at Cadre and Michael Anderson at MPAC Solutions.
The creation of PeduL began when we saw first hand there was a major problem with students having the resources to attend and stay in college. We knew there had to be a solution to America’s financial hindrance of college students. PeduL was an idea that became that solution.
To date, PeduL has worked with students to raise over $60,000 for their educational pursuits from their own networks and beyond. We’re working to have an even greater impact, and there’s no doubt in our mind that we will. Our remix of "This is America" is a reflection of the current state of the many issues that face college students in America today. Similarly to what we saw in Childish Gambino’s "This Is America," America is dancing over the long-term implications of the student debt crisis, which will eventually affect us all. Through PeduL, we hope to increase awareness of the debt crisis, and access to higher education, for all of America.
Click to view PeduL's remix of "This is America."
