Portsmouth non-profit ready to take back the community for the kids

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – 10 On Your Side has a taking back the community update! The main work on a safe space for kids in Portsmouth is complete.

In January, we introduced you to Laniqua Taylor , known to everyone as “Queen.” She created a non-profit called “For the Youth.” At the time, Queen’s facility in downtown Portsmouth was under construction, but now, it’s ready to go!

The goal of For the Youth is to give children a safe place to hang out, grow and learn after school. Taylor says she already held a test trial of a youth camp and said it was a great success. The kids read books, created artwork, made music, recorded podcasts and more. Now, she hopes you will step up to help.

“I’m hoping that the community pays for these spaces so that we can have 30 youth to come to the program at free or low cost, like extremely low cost because it’s less about the money and more about the exposure and the experience,” Taylor said. “We know the money keeps the building going, but we need the youth to stay safe, especially right here in Portsmouth, Virginia, because Portsmouth is dealing with some hardships.”

Taylor’s for-profit business, For the People , helps fund For the Youth.

“We are asking people to support the for-profit by getting monthly memberships, and that has you to get the podcast room booked out. You get about six hours with your monthly membership,” Taylor said. “So, you get the photography studio, which is a large content creation space as well. So, you don’t have to just use it as a photography space. The podcast room is a small content creation space, but it’s the podcast room.”

“Then, we also have this beautiful stage here and this event space that we’re standing in,” Taylor added. “So, if you needed to host a seminar or host a music event, any type of event, a church Bible study, any type of event that you need to host, and you needed a stage and an event space, we can we can have that here for you, and we also have the music studio in the back as well. So, the memberships lock you into having six hours a month for any one of these studios, and it gives you a discount rate for our event space.”

Taylor said everything is created with professional-grade equipment.

“In our podcast room, we already have all of the equipment for you, a Mac Book and all of the microphones that you would need to start your podcast,” Taylor said. “We have five backdrops that are paper backdrops that are hanging on the wall, and we allow people to change the set any type of way that they want to. We have professional lighting, and we have professional photographers that come in and do your photos that are signed under For the People, or you can have your own professional photographer come in.”

“You just rent out the space and come in as a model or come in as a photographer and host your photography shoots. We also have a professional engineer in the back, multiple producers, and multiple sound audio engineers. We are equipped with all Apple products. There’s nothing that we don’t have. We have all of the sound equipment, the microphones, the JBL speakers of all sizes. We just have everything you need here.”

Taylor is very busy looking to the future with upcoming events.

“We have our Winter Gala coming up, and it is December 9. So, I’m asking everyone to buy your tickets. It’s on our website and get in attendance, fall in line because this is going to be extremely beautiful. We have some great things that are going to be showcased at the Winter Gala. We’re doing the auction of some of the youth art, some of the art that was created specifically for our program. We also want to stress the sponsorship packages. Those can be found via email . So, send me an email and I’ll send you out the sponsorship packages. All the dollars count, because this facility here, after we test ran the camp, we noticed that we’re going to need something way bigger. We need a kitchen. We need a lot of different things here simply because we had a lot of children come through.”

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