Young Professionals of EO stepping up to make city a better place

EAST ORANGE, NJ — Football players at all levels of the game have a saying — “Next man up” — to describe the mindset for players waiting in the wings to “step up,” when called, on any given day.

Young Professionals of East Orange have embraced a similar motto — “Next gen up” — when it comes to their generation stepping up and assuming roles of responsibility, accountability and leadership in their city.

Young Professionals of East Orange, which includes Casim Gomez Jr.; East Orange Firefighter Akeem Cunningham; Ajah Baldwin, an aide to Mayor Lester Taylor; artist and designer Caitlin Jones; and Marqui Salley recently rented a storefront on Main Street to serve as its headquarters for outreach efforts and held its first open house mixer at Bogie’s Lounge on William Street on Wednesday, April 26.

“Tonight we met and had our first Open House to encourage membership for our nonprofit organization,” said Gomez, who is an aide to Mayor Lester Taylor and the son of 4th Ward Councilman Casim Gomez Sr., on Wednesday, April 26. “We’re trying to spur development and community interaction for people from the ages of 18 to 40. We’ve got the pointer right here: financial services and businesses; service and projects; programming arts, music culture; economic development; and community gardens and what have you. So we have a robust outline of what we want to do and tonight was very successful in bringing people together, so we can start the process of forming committees and getting stuff off the ground.”

Gomez also designs T-shirts and other apparel in his spare time and said all his fellow YPEO associates believe “It’s a big thing for all of us to try to encourage other people to get involved in any way that they can.”

“I think all of us agree that arts can be an incubator for not only just economic development but cultural interaction, and have people to come in and do economic development, too,” Gomez said. “Arts encourage people that corridors are safe; that their kids can come out and play. Arts encourage businesses that they can go somewhere, because there’s a gallery space next door to keep it moving.

“So one of the biggest things that we’re working on is working with the young artists in this community, so they can have a gallery space. We have a space already on lower Main Street that we’re working to clean out, so that we can host open gallery spaces, open mics, hosting parties and what have you, so that kids and people in this community can have someplace to go that’s affordable and classy and coordinated, so they don’t have to look much further. They don’t have to go to Newark or any of the neighboring communities.”

Those remarks were music to the ears of local artist and party promoter Saif Muhammad and artist and youth advocate Jeffrey Osborne, who were both at the YPEO open house event.

“I’m into the arts and I’m into people debuting their talent,” said Muhammad on Wednesday, April 26. “I’m trying to give people outlets where we all come together. Someone told me about this event with the Young Professionals and I’m just glad to be here with a whole bunch of like-minded people that are on the same mission, basically.”

Osborne and Muhammad are friends and fellow artists who have known each other for years, but never expected to run into each other at the YPEO event.

“I’m glad to be around the same like-minded people — some people I knew for years — seeing that we all have a professional outlook and we’re all trying to capitalize on it, captivate the minds,” said Osborne on Wednesday, April 26. “I didn’t really expect to see anybody that I already knew, when I came to the open house.”

The Young Professionals of East Orange said their group is based on the premise that people coming together and working together for a common cause is good for business, economics and the entire East Orange community.

“We’re also about economic development in a long form, too,” Gomez said. “A lot of people need spaces to program their upstarts and their businesses. East Orange has a number of entrepreneurs that need spaces for their business. There was a yoga instructor here; Caitlyn’s fashion accessories; we have people that do clothing … who need a space to vent their wares. So our space can also double as an open space for a flea market or maybe possible a pop-up shop and those are some of the things that we’re working on now.

“We have 1,000 square feet that we have on lower Main Street, just for that purpose, to incubate in any way or space that’s possible. So, in other communities that are these renaissance cities, they use arts and renegade economic development to encourage people, like this is the place to be. So we wanted to help establish that in this community. We’re all long-term, lifelong residents of East Orange and that’s what we wanted to do.”

Baldwin said Young Professionals of East Orange isn’t just about advancing and promoting the arts and culture in East Orange.

“We also talk about programming and one thing that we plan on doing is have multiple areas that we focus on,” said Baldwin on Wednesday, April 26. “Casim’s focus is the arts, but we also want to have financial literacy programs; show people how to do their taxes; how to properly do mortgages and homes and fix their credit. We also want to have programs for mentoring for kids and for computer literacy. We want to teach and provide space.

“So we want to be kind of a one-stop-shop for the city of East Orange, not only for people in our age range, but younger and people that might be a little bit older than what we are. We want to be the space where people go to, if they just want to hang out or if they want to go somewhere after school or if they want to find out more information about what’s going on in the community that they’re in. If they want to have a community garden, we want to be that facility or that organization that can help someone facilitate that or start it off. We’re for everyone in the city to do, to make it better. We can be serious, but we can have fun, too. That’s what the Young Professionals is; we have programs and we have events. We want to be there for everyone and every type of entity.”

“The Young Professionals of East Orange have an open-door policy,” said Cunningham on Wednesday, April 26. “Anybody interested in building and improving the city and the community are welcome to join us. We look forward to working with the community, elected officials, local businesses and other organizations to make East Orange the kind of destination city that we all want it to become.”

  Casim Gomez, Young Professionals of East Orange