AMPED is a Louisville nonprofit that uses music and technology to empower young people. Last November, they opened a new Tech and Learning Center in the city’s West End.
Dave Christopher, Sr. is AMPED’s president and founder. He joined me to discuss how the new building, at 17th Street and West Market, will help the organization carry out its mission to serve the community.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Tyrene Johnson: Tell us a little bit about AMPED and what kind of programs you have.
Dave Christopher, Sr.: So we have an 18-week music program. We take about 150 kids every 18 weeks, and we teach everything that has anything to do with music. We have a year-long business accelerator where we provide Black and Brown businesses with all the tools that they need to run their business to become profitable. That's accounting, legal, mental health, counseling, marketing, access to capital through pitch competitions. And we also have banking relationships where we provide them with opportunities to get lines of credit and establish a real banking relationship with their banks. And then we also have, finally, the Tech and Learning Center, where we have a technology workforce development program. It's an 18-week immersive where we provide them with training. We pay for that training, we pay for the certifications if they pass the test. We then work with local employers to get them jobs that start at or above a living wage.
MTJ: You just opened this new Tech and Learning Center, and your program existed before the building. What does the new building help you to do?
DCS: A few things. One is that it helps us to expand the technology training. But probably even bigger than that, for me, it's sort of a signal to the community that we can, and that we deserve so much more. This process started five years ago to make this happen. And I remember in one of the meetings, during the pandemic, one of the people on the call asked me, why would I want to build a Tech and Learning Center there? I go, what do you mean? He says that there's nothing else there. And my response was I don't intend for there to be nothing else there. This is just the beginning. I said, NuLu wasn't always NuLu. It had to start with something. And I believe in Louisville, and I believe in all of Louisville, and I specifically believe in west Louisville. And so I know that we can have more than that, but this is the catalyst.
We've actually already seen the changes, starting when we broke ground on that building. There was another building on the corner that had been sitting there for a while, and I guess maybe somebody owned it and started, but they stopped. As soon as we started building, they went back to building. There's a warehouse across the street, all along the fence line was trash. When we broke ground and started building, they cleaned all that up, they planted trees. They just opened up the Ben Richmond apartments across the corner from us. And so we're seeing all of these changes that are happening in a place where he said nothing was. But I realized that something will be.
MTJ: How do you want it to impact the community?
DCS: My goal is to build this economic corridor on Market Street and then on other corridors like that. But it's really about getting people to understand. Because I've been here. I'm not originally from Louisville, but I've been here 25 years. So I refer to myself as a Louisvillian. When I got here, I saw these projects start, and then there was nothing else. Then by the time you started another project, that project was so old people didn't realize, so there was a lot of lost energy and lack of momentum. I want people to see that we can do more. Because I think what we're showing is that when we say we're going to do something, we do it.
At our groundbreaking, my chief of staff, Christina Shadle, said to people, Dave is not a unicorn. You can do what Dave did. He's special, but he's not a unicorn. And somebody said to me, even if he is a unicorn, there can be more than one unicorn, right? And so that's what I want people to see. I want people to see that it's possible that the people that you think you need, you don't necessarily need, and the things that you think you can't do, you actually can do.
MTJ: What is it that you think people are assuming when they question that?
DCS: They’re believing the dominant narrative. There are stories told about west Louisville by people who have never actually been to west Louisville. What's sadder is that people believe it. And what's even crazier than that is the people in west Louisville will believe it. They're told by people that don't know them who they are, and then they behave or they become who the person said they were. Or they ignore the fact that the people are lying. And so nobody pushes back against the dominant narrative.
A gentleman from the Kellogg Foundation, some years ago, had come to the city. He was talking to a bunch of people about different projects, and he said you can spend your time trying to tear down the dominant narrative, or you can build a new narrative. All of our programs are about economic empowerment, even the music program. Because in our music program, these kids, if they perform, we pay them to perform. We don't ask them to do it for free. When somebody calls us and says, hey, we want your kids to come and do this performance at this event, we're like, what is your budget? We're trying to teach these kids that you put in the work, that what you did has value, and that you should not give it away for free. And so they learn that at the beginning. We have kids who are selling their music right now, performing and being paid, because that's what we taught them, that they have value.
In our business incubator, in the tech program, we pay the students to come and take those classes, and people are like, why would you pay them to take a class? Because this is not a handout. They're going to come here, and they're going to work, they're going to show up 30 hours a week, and we're going to pay them $15 an hour to do it, and then they're going to become successful in the community and be able to give back to the community. So that's an investment in that. You're going to work, and you're going to get paid, and you're going to pay your bills. That's dignity.
