BINGO Mentoring Program
Former Detroit mayor, entrepreneur, and Detroit Piston Dave Bing founded the Bing Youth Institute in 2014 to continue the legacy of a strong and thriving Detroit by engaging with and helping the city’s youth—particularly those who identify as African-American boys and young men. Through our school-based mentoring program, BINGO, we’ve spent nearly a decade debunking the stereotypes and stigmatization of Black males and helping our mentees develop into responsible young men full of passion, purpose, and perseverance.
In 2020, when schools closed due to the global coronavirus pandemic, we were presented with an opportunity to explore options beyond higher education for our mentees. We began strategizing for another program that would expose our young men to the skilled trades.
With pilot funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, BYI we began the Workforce Development Initiative.
We considered the findings from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which recognized that changing the Labor Market Prospects for workers from historically excluded communities would require strategies that cut across job training, education, human services, and economic development systems. It is the goal of our Workforce Development Initiative to create opportunities and conditions where our trainees’ success is both attainable and sustainable.
Chief Operating Officer Robert Warfield and founder Dave Bing.
Specifically, our Workforce Development Initiative is designed to provide young African American young men access to career opportunities in the skilled trades. We do this by connecting them with skilled trades professionals, who own their own businesses. They provide the young men with hands-on job training, mentoring, and skilled trades training.
Our Initiative has a series of unique collaborations with Detroit area Black-owned businesses in the skilled trades. These partnerships support the premise that small business owners are vital to the economic mobility and viability of communities.
In 2023, BYI became an official vendor in Detroit’s Housing Demolition and Rehabilitation Program. As a result, we will instruct a minimum of 25 trainees annually and provide employment opportunities for each of them through both our small business collaborative partnerships and our official vendor relationship with the city and the rehabbing some 100,000-plus vacant homes.
